Enrique Norten

• Price: $16.50
• Paperback—74 pages (1997)
• ISBN: 0-9614792-8-0
• Dimensions: 6.5" x 9"
• © 1997 The University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Enrique Norten / TEN Arquitectos, Mexico City
• Download this title
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Design: Christian Unverzagt

Printing: Goetzcraft Printers, Inc., Ann Arbor

Sample Selection

Lighting Center

Insurgentes Sur 519,
Mexico D.F.
1989

Located along a main commercial avenue in Mexico City, an existing four-story structure dating from the 1940s was acquired to accommodate the headquarters of a lighting company. The building occupies a small triangular site that is the result of the intersection of two distinct city grids.

The program included new showrooms and offices for an importer and distributor of lighting fixtures as well as the transformation of the building into a billboard advertising lighting.

New zoning codes enforced the preservation of the existing building. Consequently the resulting renovation seeks to create a contrast between old and new through forms and finishes. The structure—concrete reinforced load bearing brick walls and concrere slabs—has been stripped back. Steel beams and concrete columns from a previous intervention have been retained. While intended to be covered and finished with other materials, these poorly crafted elements have been left exposed and unfinished in order to express the true character of the existing building.

Materials new to the building—including various types of glass, metal laminate, stainless steel cables, varnished wood and polished marble—have been selected for each intervention. Attached and affixed both within and without, these elements express the dynamic conditions of the place in opposition to the static character of the structure. A dialogue of contradiction is thus created between the imperfection of the existing building and the fine, delicate qualities of the new architecture.