WOHA‘s first exhibition in Latin America, Garden City Mega City: WOHA’s Urban Ecosystems presents over two decades of WOHA’s international designs. With its inauguration at the Museum of the City of Mexico during the MEXTRÓPOLI International Festival of Architecture and City, the exhibition proposes the introduction of biodiversity and lively public spaces into vertical, climate-sensitive highrises within megalopolises.
The exhibition features sixteen intricate architectural models, an immersive video installation and large-scale drawings and images that show WOHA’s proposals for vertical communities in the tropical megacities. PLANE-SITE documented the exhibition’s opening along with the points of view of various MEXTRÓPOLI contributors and city officials.
In Latin America especially, the analysis of the similarities between megacities in Singapore and megacities in the western hemisphere can show Mexican architects new ways to explore the increasingly populated cities of the American continent. José María Espinosa, Director of the Museum of Mexico City, said,
Mexico is a city that has different characteristics to other cities in the world but at the same time it shares with them the problems of any big city. The exhibition is about a current search of contemporary architecture; I think that now we can consider the possibility of having a vertical city with the advantages of a horizontal city.
_11.13.35_AM.jpg?1492626903 "Courtesy of PLANE—SITE")
Courtesy of PLANE—SITE
As for the mutual learning relationship that could be established between the two regions, Wong Mun Summ, founding director of WOHA, said,
I think there has been very little dialogue between our region and this part of the world, although we are part of the same tropical strip, and we have similar economic conditions. The most interesting and exciting thing is to open this dialogue and find solutions that apply to our shared context.
GARDEN CITY MEGA CITY is open to the public until April 30 at the Museum of the City of Mexico.