Design: Ramon Cordova Gonzalez

University City is the main campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in the south of Mexico City. It encloses the Olympic Stadium, around 40 faculties and institutes, the Cultural Center, an ecological reserve, the Central Library, and a few museums. It was built during the 1950s on an ancient solidified lava bed called “El Pedregal”. Currently there are various bus stops and public transport stations used by thousands of people to reach the university facilities every day. The University subway terminal station is the most relevant of them. However, with the increasing expansion and overpopulation of the university and the city in general, the  idea of renewing the station became relevant under the premise of making it not only a subway station but a general public transport hub, in Mexico known as CETRAM.

The proposal was developed from understanding the CETRAM not only as a transitional space but as a destination in itself. Taking advantage of the ecological and cultural potential that the University City offers it is possible to create a gateway to both the ecological reserve of Pedregal de San Angel and the Cultural Zone of the university, which allows the people to make art and nature a part of their daily routine.

The building functions as a pivot, an element that takes advantage of its position in the intersection of two avenues and invites to surround it and discover the natural reserve of “El Pedregal”. The proposal is open to different sides, responding to the flows of people that approach from the university and from the different neighborhoods that surround it. CETRAM is much more than a transition space, here it becomes also a destination. Instead of being imposed on the natural reserve, it is open and infiltrated by it and by the cultural zone of the campus. The building is a continuation of the landscape, not only visually but quite literally. The same peculiar volcanic stones that exist in the area lift and frame a center where the boundaries between nature, culture and infrastructure become blurry and the everyday experience of commuting pluralizes, opening unforeseen possibilities.