Agave House

This project for The Agave Landscape of Tequila (México), listed as World Cultural Heritage by UNESCO, addresses the question of how architecture, through interpretation, can create experiences that aim to reveal and value one of the essential elements of a living culture: the identity of a territory.

The center is located on a steep terrain overlooking the Agave Landscape, between the highlands of the Tequila Volcano on the south, and the valley of the Santiago River on the north. The visitor center is conceived as a series of individual buildings that work together as a whole, they are placed on the site to create a path that make the visitors constantly go from inside to outside, generating different levels of connection with the territory, and framing the landscape in different moments. The path becomes an active element of the center’s experience by making the visitor discover the landscape through architecture, and it is architecture that creates personal experiences that intend to revalue the importance of the site. The center addresses the issue of architectural typology: the individual elements are presented as variations of the same formal ideal, a simple form that serves as the basis to experiment with the different spaces required in each specific program. The type does not represent an element that has to be copied, it represents the idea of an element that serves as a model for the different spatial experiences. The architecture of the center uses scale to approach the relationship between landscape, architecture and visitors. The first scale relates the buildings with the landscape, the architecture dialogues with the territory. A second scale is there to recognize itself as a public and social place; and, finally, it gives a glimpse of human scale in its most elemental unit, the scale in which the center seeks to generate meaningful spatial experiences. The interior spaces try to arouse emotions at a personal level. The idea of each space, whether transition, meeting or exhibition, compels the way visitors relate to the landscape. In the lowest height of the building, a direct connection between visitors and territory is generated through open spaces that allow full views of the landscape, whereas in transition areas the space is perceived as enclosed and vertical threshold that frames specific parts of the landscape. “The aim of Interpretation is not instruction, but provocation.” F.T.