![]() Several of these can be seen driving along the streets of Condesa, a residential district laid out in the 1920s and ’1930s that has been transformed over the last fifteen years into one of the most attractive areas for well-to-do members of the younger generations. The construction boom has made the preservation of existing buildings an increasingly common theme for design, and one to which Mexican architects take a pragmatic approach, but this does not mean that it is not possible to come across some interesting examples of this practice. Torre Reforma is a 246-metre-high building that is sustainable, smart and attentive to its context, rejecting the paradigm of the steel-and-glass skyscraper but still offering its occupants breath-taking panoramas of the city. Mexico City, Torre Reforma, LBR&A Architects. In fact the tower was constructed in part on the site of a house dating from the beginning of the 20 th century that was moved to permit the digging of the foundations and then put back in its original position. The spectacular engineering solutions are not confined to these features. The shape of the tower is modulated in this way to maximize the buildable area permitted by the regulations and to optimize the energy performance of a building particularly attentive to the environment. The third side consists of a glass façade that turns through an angle of 45 degrees to offer vertiginous views of the city, with an overhang of 14 metres. The floor slabs are hung from a set of diagonal tie-beams, leaving the internal spaces completely free of pillars. A slender and irregular 57-storey prism with a triangular plan and a height of 246 metres, it has two almost completely blind fronts of reinforced concrete that act as the load-bearing structure and are topped by a distributive core. Among the skyscrapers that line the Periférico as it approaches its intersection with the monumental Paseo de la Reforma, the recently completed Torre Reforma, designed by Benjamin Romano’s LBR&A studio, stands out. From the height of the Segundo Piso, the elevated road with which the local government has recently tried to find a solution to perennial traffic jams, it is possible to see – smog permitting – the boundless expanse of the city, dotted with building sites that bear witness to intense building activity. Along the lanes at the sides used by local traffic the brutal cuts that the road system has made in a complex fabric that mixes protected residential areas, office and commercial districts and self-built working-class neighbourhoods are evident. The best way to get a general view of the metropolis is to drive along the Periférico, the urban motorway that runs around the central areas. It aims to be totally environmentally friendly and sustainable, but will take the place of what was supposed to be an ecological reserve, an area for which a number of projects (outstanding among them those of Alberto Kalach and Iñaki Echeverria) envisaged restoring the lake as a means of stabilizing the precarious hydrogeological equilibrium of the volcanic basin in which Mexico City is located. Located in the middle of the now almost completely drained Lake Texcoco, one of the five lakes on which the ancient capital of the Aztec empire used to stand, the new terminal is not free of contradictions. Evidence of this renewal is provided by the construction of the new international airport, designed by Norman Foster and Fernando Romero, at a cost of around 9 billion euros, which ought to be completed by the end of 2020. ![]() All of this is true, but in reality, it applies to just a few districts that the predominantly white upper middle class has carved out for itself in a megalopolis with problems that is nevertheless going through a period of great renewal. The growing international attention paid to Mexico has led people to talk of its capital as a “new Berlin”, a residence of choice for intellectuals, artists, designers and creative people in general, attracted from all over the world by its cultural ferment, its liveability and the friendliness of its inhabitants, as well as the low cost of living and property. Then came the release of Spectre, the latest James Bond adventure whose spectacular opening scenes – the fruit of government tax incentives for production – have helped to put Mexico City on the global stage and to attract foreign investment. The International Monetary Fund was the first to announce, a few years ago, the arrival of “Mexico’s moment”.
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