Ajijic is a Jalisco town Located on the shores of Lake Chapala, the largest in Mexico. Its climate is kind, the views are unsurpassed and its history is tracked long before the conquest. In fact, it is cornerstone to The Wixárika culturesince the aquatic body is one of the cardinal points for Nahuatl mythology. All these elements are key to understanding the architectural project behind the Center for Culture and Arts of La Ribera which recently opened in the community, as part of the Cardinal Culture Program, promoted by the Ministry of Culture of Jalisco, which seeks to decentralize the cultural offer of the State. “For us it was very important that our project could communicate part of the cultural history of the site. That is why we gave ourselves the task of investigating and knowing some of the foundational myths of the former Wixárika culture, ”said Alejandro Guerrero and Andrea Soto de Atelier Ars, a firm in charge of the CCAR project.
The Center for Culture and Arts of La Ribera is located in Ajijic, Chapala, Jalisco; It occupies a land of five thousand 33 square meters, with a roofed surface of three thousand 100 square meters. The library is the set of the whole.Rodrigo Calzada / Albers Studio
The center starts from an auditorium and a pre -existing office building, to which a library such as a facade, a bedroom area, a longitudinal services building with music classroom, dance room and outdoor amphitheater, as well as a central water mirror, are added. It is an interesting recycling of spaces, since Atelier Ars not only returned to life the previous configurations, but took as a starting point the brick vaults that configured the auditorium to continue with the materiality of the project, implementing mud of the region to, in addition to providing a sense of uniformity, exalting the artisanal knowledge of the area and, thus, create an impressive polymorphic structure in tones reddish However, the most iconic element of CCAR is the discursive line hidden in aquifer details. First, the two gardeners placed in the front pond that runs through the facade, as a metaphor for the relationship between the lake and its islands. Subsequently, another pond surrounded by stone gardeners that presumes, in the center, a vortex of water that alludes to the myth of lake desiccation.