A-001 Taller de Arquitectura presents Pabellón Centro de Cultura Ambiental (CCA), a facility responding directly to society's general lack of environmental awareness. CCA seeks to create a model of urban governance that achieves a dynamic balance between socio-cultural, environmental, territorial, economic, and public policy aspects.

How can we take care of something we don´t understand and know about?

The key element for transforming experience to consciousness was an ethnobotanical garden surrounding the pavilion, in which the biocultural heritage of the principal vegetal species of Mexico´s Valley are exhibited and divided into 5 categories: groceries, toxics, religious, medical, and those that help us in the construction; to emphasize our natural resources, viewpoints are located throughout the complex: these are basalt stone rings containing seven of the original endemic ecosystem of the region.

The main construction is based on a hybrid system: a concrete slab with low CO2 emissions, vertical steel elements, and oxidized basalt walls that replace columns and function as load-bearing elements.

The Ethnobotanical Garden works as an extension of the pavilion's layout towards the outside. The rectangular plots are deployed on a series of platforms that follow the natural slope of the land and integrate harmoniously as a reminder of the pyramidal foundations of our native culture.

The irrigation system takes advantage of the height differences between the platforms. Through gravity, the water from the bio-pond, fed by water from Lago Menor, is taken to each plot, facilitating its maintenance, reducing operating costs, and returning excess water to the subsoil via an infiltration wetland.

CCA is a space providing conditions that allow visitors to enjoy its biodiversity, while raising awareness of the current climate change situation, and sharing knowledge of existing tools designed to stop and reverse it.