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CENTRO, a new school for the creative industries, designed by TEN Arquitectos, is helping young creatives in Mexico City get on in the real world. The brainchild of one of the most successful business women in Mexico, the impact of the building on this so far ungentrified area will be huge, with plans in the future for student residences and a start-up hub

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Words Shumi Bose

For the population of a developing country, there are few things in life that carry more fervour than education. The gateway provided by schools, colleges and universities to a better, more secure and more universal standard of life is the sacred thread to which aspirational parents in the developing world attempt to bind their children, often because it's the only way out. This is the paradox which explains why, in previous decades, less integrated nations like India and China continued to produce highly competent students, even from difficult or radically compromised backgrounds. However, to plant a new school or university anywhere - starting from scratch - is not a small undertaking, and to do so privately, without the backing and security of state endeavours or administration is perhaps even more impressive.

Such was the dream, some eighteen years ago, of Gina Diez Barroso de Franklin, real estate developer and glamorous dreamer - not to mention one of the most successful business women in Mexico. One of only two Mexicans in the C200 global list of women business leaders, Barroso owns the Diarq Group, one of Latin America's largest real estate and design holding companies with eight subsidiaries, over 1000 employees and over 700 projects across the Americas. Her dream for CENTRO, Mexico's newest school for the creative industries - from fashion design to urban master planning - was to bring a sense of business nous to the artistic professions, in order to help young creatives get on in the real world. 'I am a successful business woman - which is not normal, especially in a place like Mexico.

Centro faces the Bosque de Chapultepec's cemetery. Image Credit: Courtesy of Centro

I really wanted to give something back to education,' explains Barroso - who is in fact Gina, to everyone, students and clients alike. 'So, I thought about what was missing, and I decided what I wanted to do was help creative people with the best business tools. That's exactly why I founded CENTRO, because we produce all these wonderful creative people and then what? They have no idea how to run a business, how to charge, how to value their work or themselves.'

CENTRO originally opened ten years ago; much smaller campus, game students, willing to take a punt on a new educational model. The business nous is less obvious in the courses offered, which indeed tend to describe the more commercial branches of 'creative industries' - offering undergraduate courses in graphic design, film and television, fashion and interior design. Even Gina admits to the shakiness of the proposition, though she never lost faith herself. 'First I did a marketing strategy that said that it wasn't going to work. That just made me more determined; as a woman you have to trust your gut feeling. You must not care too much about what others think.'

Evidently she was correct, for a few years later the uptake by students in Mexico was such that the college was clamouring for more space. This autumn, term opened in a new 5000 sq m purpose-designed, LEED-Platinum status building by the Mexican firm TEN Arquitectos, led by one of the most prolific authors of contemporary Mexican architecture, Enrique Norten.

The courtyard offers tranquility, shaded from the avenue outside. Image Credit: Photographs by Luis Gordoa, Courtesy Ten Arquitectos and Centro Renderings Nuevo Campus Centro Constituyentes / TEN Arquitectos / Courtesy Centro

Norten's award-winning office TEN is split between Mexico and New York City, with projects across the Americas and beyond - but, as he says, 'It's a great honour to have such an opportunity to build somewhere so close to my heart.' As a young graduate of the Universidad Iberoamericana in 1978, the Mexico City-born Norten found himself slightly frustrated by the somewhat stultifying influence of his country's first generation of modernists, such as Luis Barragán or the more Brutalist Pedro Ramírez Vázquez. Instead, he escaped to complete his studies at Cornell University where a more technical and rationalist attitude of modernism was indelibly inflected on to his own work. 'I'm definitely a modernist,' says Norten, now a highly affable 61. 'Rationalism and discipline came to me from Mathias Ungers, as well as an understanding of the city from Colin Rowe.

Staircases are a major part of CENTRO's tectonics. Image Credit: Photographs by Luis Gordoa, Courtesy TEN Arquitectos and Centro

From a material, systems or technological point of view, modernism is still the biggest revolution and we have added to it more responsibilities, in terms of social, environmental and I would even say, political roles. How do we try to rethink the modern vocabulary of architecture?'

At CENTRO, TEN's material palette is rather simple: steel, exposed concrete and spray-coated metal mesh shielding panes of glass. Slabs of concrete are left exposed but are hand finished in places (like the lift lobby, which bears a lovely brush-hatched surface). If the materials are simple and straightforward, character and inspiration are provided in extremely literal terms - the place is plastered with exhortations to 'produce' 'collaborate' 'innovate' and 'imagine', these words being either cast into the very ground under the students' feet, or emblazoned in bright colours on the stall doors of the bathrooms and common areas.

Centro's giant stairs and patterns by Jan Hendrix are shaded by a volume above. Image Credit: Photographs By Luis Gordoa, Courtesy TEN Arquitectos and Centro

However, the most obvious and exaggerated feature of the design is the abundance of staircases. Stairs run here, there and everywhere, in all directions, like an Escher drawing. With a current student body at 2500, rising to 6000 in the next five years, this is a highly practical move, but at the moment the exposed circulation promotes an attitude of dynamism, of movement and exchange. This focus on circulation to provide the fundamental meaning and character to an otherwise utilitarian architecture follows a pattern of American educational buildings - as opposed to redbrick or even stone-faced connotations of traditional British and European universities - characterised by adaptable workspaces, flexible 'breakout' areas, and multiple, criss-crossing paths of entry and procession.

The bare palette of a classroom accentuates the colour in framed graphic designs. Image Credit: Photographs by Mara Sánchez / Courtesy of Centro and Diarq Diseñ0 Y Arquitectura

One 'feature' stairway is a giant artwork in itself, by the Dutch-born, Mexico-based artist Jan Hendrix. Entering through the campus lobby, one is confronted with a monumental set of steps - more of an outdoor amphitheatre than a staircase, though it has smaller steps cut into it for ease of movement. An organic and abstracted pattern of shoots, unfurling leaves and budding blossoms is picked out with a pale stone paste, inlaid into the chunky steps.

In fact, this botanic metaphor is a natural evolution from Hendrix's tempered glass panels on the facade of the previous CENTRO building, each 20m across, upon which he printed the shapes of various seeds and pods - suggesting creativity at its germinal stage. On sunny days, students can choose to sprawl in the sun on the adjacent lawn, but it is far more comfortable to cluster in the shade on the black steps - a perfect place to hold an impromptu seminar, or just eat lunch.

A green roof tops the three storey, street-facing block. Image Credit: Photographs by Luis Gordoa, Courtesy Ten Arquitectos and Centro Renderings Nuevo Campus Centro Constituyentes / TEN Arquitectos / Courtesy Centro

The college does not quite plug into the neighbourhood yet, and this seems to be with some degree of intention. Avenida Constituyentes is one of Mexico's busiest arterial highways, skimming the southern edge of the Bosque de Chapultepec, one of the city's major green lungs. Pedestrian access to the building is a little awkward, and the American predilection for the car is evidenced by no less than three storeys of underground parking (as opposed to 300 bicycle racks, to be installed in the future).

The surrounding neighbourhood is distinctly ungentrified (though Barroso has bought up adjoining plots and plans to build student housing and expanded facilities in the near future); currently, it is composed primarily of low-level residential sprawl and small industry, such as auto-repair and stone-cutting. Across the avenue is a large cemetery, with thousands of ornate pieces of funerary architecture, produced locally. Unsurprisingly, considering the huge volume of traffic and sound pollution - and perhaps, the hovering presence of buried souls nearby, not to mention the social disparity - the CENTRO campus almost has its back to the road, presenting little invitation in its facade or orientation.

The western facade's metal mesh screen brings curves to the composition. Image Credit: Photographs by Luis Gordoa, Courtesy TEN Arquitectos and Centro

Entrance to the campus is via a simple three-story block, which sits behind a white wall at street level, punctuated by deep, angled little windows. This low block largely houses offices and administration as well as a double-height cinema space, and is topped with a 'green roof', with neat arrangements of indigenous flora that can be observed from the taller blocks within the campus.

Parallel to the street, at the rear of the site, is a large six-storey volume which houses the majority of workshops and studios, from fashion to woodworking, its elevation tacked across by those multiple flights of stairs. The tallest block runs perpendicular to both the front and back blocks, cantilevered above Hendrix's botanical stair-amphitheatre. This volume contains a four-storey mediatheque as well as the film and television suites.

The main block cantilevers north and catches the evening sun. Image Credit: Photographs by Luis Gordoa, Courtesy TEN Arquitectos and Centro

The end wall of this 'floating' block is the only one glazed, providing some degree of transparency and visual permeability with the surrounding area. Looking onto Constituyentes, but raised above the level of traffic, huge panes of glass flood the libraries with light, a sense of connection with the surrounding greenery and the cemetery (of which Mexican examples hardly feel sinister) across the road, while affording magnificent views across the verdant Chapultepec Park, a little further north. Billowing metal mesh wraps like a sailcloth around this block's western facade; on the interior part of the campus, the elevation facing the interior courtyard features the same mesh (in places, slightly warped) used as horizontal baffling, filtering and shading the interior from strong sunlight.

The library in the main block looks north to the park. Image Credit: Photographs by Mara Sánchez / Courtesy of Centro and Diarq Diseñ0 Y Arquitectura

These interlocking volumes are orientated around a central courtyard; each perimeter block shields from noise and filters the reality of the surrounding site, directing movement around and across the courtyard. This composition shelters and perhaps intensifies the sense of energy and creativity by making circulation into a performative act. Indeed, the sheer number of stairs - with several flights weaving across the large studio block, another spiral tucked within the western facade, not to mention the monumental black-stair amphitheatre - mean that the students perform a kind of choreography of varying paces across and through the campus, animating the fairly simple architectural language with activity.

Despite the current lack of connection with the site, there are a few gestures that hint at the public or accessible aims of the college. For example, a splendid roof terrace, which is bound to become popular as an event venue, will surely bring people in, as will the 450-seater wood-panelled auditorium. CENTRO trumped the Chipperfield-designed JUMEX art museum for the first outlet in Mexico for Printed Matter, the highly reputable (and non-profit) distributor of artist books, although it functions largely as a stationery shop with gifts and art publications.

Centro is composed of intersecting volumes, stairs and external passages. Image Credit: Photographs by Luis Gordoa, Courtesy TEN Arquitectos and Centro

Mexico seems ready for innovation and change; cultural and social aspirations are being matched by growing numbers of investors. A large legend upon entering CENTRO reads: Welcome to the creative class. 'We can measure this mood by the number of students we have,' says Barroso, whose foundation awards scholarships to 35 per cent of the intake. At the same time, social divides continue to be extreme in this part of the world, with the role of education under pivotal scrutiny.

It is difficult to ignore the fact that the opening of the relatively swanky new campus coincides with the first anniversary of the murder of 43 students - all from rural and impoverished areas - who were protesting against inequality in education. According to Barroso and Norten, arts education needs to move with the times - moving away from the traditional enclaves of the Bellas Artes or fine art institutions, to grasp design as integrated with commercial fields. Of course, this goes hand in hand with a general urban and socioeconomic development. Norten is in charge of a new train station a few blocks away, which should improve accessibility for students and staff. But who will be left behind?

Staircases are cantilevered across the southern volume's inner façade. Image Credit: Photographs by Luis Gordoa, Courtesy TEN Arquitectos and Centro

'The rhetoric of gentrification is rather different in Mexico City,' explains Norten. 'These areas started as irregular settlements, with bad infrastructure and pockets of danger.' The impact of a new university, as well as the associated infrastructural improvements to the neighbourhood, are going to be huge. Barroso intends to integrate a start-up hub in the forthcoming student residences, employing and providing economic uplift to the surrounding communities. Referring to CENTRO's integration in the city fabric, Norten is hopeful: 'Very soon, I see those walls disappearing; I think it could become like a city within a city, which is what we would like.'