Architectural Details: GGA’s Desert City, a Cactus Complex
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Architecture and cacti may seem worlds apart. But on closer inspection, both are defined by structure and repetition, and whether simple or ornamented, they are shaped by their context. When García-Germán Arquitectos set out to design Desert City, the team wanted to celebrate xerophytic plants and a growing culture of interests and events around them. The result is an elegant and uplifting architecture that parallels the beauty and structure of diverse cacti from around the world.
Sited in San Sebastián de los Reyes, GGA’s soaring cactus complex is an infrastructural design between highway and forest, harboring a “twin oasis for cactus exhibiting and growth” with a mixed eco-cultural program. The project showcases sustainable and ecological approaches alongside educational spaces. At Desert City‘s heart is a large garden and greenhouse that house a range of leisure activities and presentations to small conventions, workshops and exhibitions.
The success of the project lies in its airy, soaring roof and a series of inventive structural solutions. The project’s plants and program are sheltered by a big, lightweight container that responds, in terms of scale and materiality, to the nearby A-1 Highway. It also features a double-layer ETFE cushion system on the roof that mitigates variations in temperature.
GGA designed the project alongside builder Isolux Corsán, as well as structural engineer Felipe F. Sanz and the greenhouse roof engineer Arenas Ingenieros. Together, they created a cloister-like cactus garden and a cable roof inspired by tensegrity structures for a “billboard-building” alongside the highway. As architect Eduardo Prieto noted, the design features a “powerful steel bridge that extends 40 meters above the cacti, its span constituting the most spectacular moment of the building. The bridge synthesizes the building’s main argument: the image of a machine hovering over the garden to produce a picturesque, if not Surrealist, contrast between opposing geometries.”
Desert City is a large complex that includes an exhibition and sales space, as well as a restaurant, shop, storage, and office areas. It is organized internally by a sequence of symmetries around the cactus garden, which receives newcomers, and the greenhouse space. As the team notes, despite its hybrid program, the complex’s construction is systematized through repetition, modulation and prefabrication of elements.
The structure takes on the form of a huge, abstract and stretched out skeleton. The idea was for the building to communicate its inner workings and the veiled presence of greenery as seen from the passing car through a tinted, watery glass façade. As the team explains, the architecture incorporates sustainable solutions such as transparent photovoltaic glass, geothermal power, water recovery systems, solar controls, and extensive plantings in the site, which was originally a wasteland.
Overall, the project was designed to overlap activities that range from the exhibiting, growing and breeding of cactus from around the globe. As GGA stated, the overlapping of apparently excluding situations, such as “commercial exploitation of leisure events vs. exemplary “green” business; building as sole infrastructure vs. atmospheric and “soft” finishes; size vs. fragility; and oasis by the highway” created a new opportunity. It also includes a significant commitment to R&D, undertaken in collaboration with international universities.
An interplay between light, structure and cacti, Desert City embodies a highly refined and well-executed approach. The building has become a filter between the harsh infrastructural condition of the highway and the limit of the huge green pocket formed by the Parque Regional de la Cuenca Alta del Manzanares on the other side. In turn, it showcases how architecture can be inspired by nature while being created for and with it.
The winners of Architizer’s Fourth Annual One Drawing Challenge have been revealed! Interested in next year’s program? Subscribe to our newsletter for updates.
This multi-residential project by Cherem Arquitectos on the outskirts of Mexico City is the contemporary equivalent of the traditional Mexican Hacienda. The project consists of a dozen flat roofed buildings interspersed by three main courtyards and large, lush gardens. Inside, the firm aimed to create a strong contrast between the large paneled concrete walls and the natural light entering from skylights. This is accentuated by the rich display of plants and native artwork throughout, suggesting an artisanal quality to the houses’ rough concrete finishes.
This 1960s suburban house in Mérida, Yucatán was recently renovated by TACO Taller de Arquitectura Contextual to accommodate the accessibility needs of the aging property owners. As part of the renovation, the firm gave a nod to the original era of the house with a new second skin: a lattice of compressed white cement made with discontinued molds from the sixties. The semi-permeable walls provide a new textured intermediary between interior and exterior, where both sunlight and interior light play in unique ways with the circular patterns.
This new home designed for a retired couple on the outskirts of Oaxaca is what the firm Espacio 18 Arquitectura has described as “an oasis at the city limits”. The house is modeled like an old colonial house from downtown Oaxaca with a floorplan centered around the kitchen and the central patio, where the couple hopes to host numerous social events. Likewise, the architectural combination of smooth concrete, timber and bright red clay brick creates a warm, hospitable atmosphere in the house’s congregation spaces. No doubt the homeowners will be recurring dinner party hosts.
This modestly sized house located in an industrial neighborhood of Santiago de Querétaro manages to look rugged and hospitable at the same time. Intersticial Arquitectura undertook major renovations to this once deteriorating one-story concrete house, decluttering the space with the addition of a luminous and well-ventilated second floor. The renovation also combines rugged and smooth concrete sections for the new walls – a play of textures that pays homage to the local industrial heritage without losing the warm touch of the former building.
“In March 2021, an Evergreen container ship blocked the Suez Canal waterway for six days. In a scenario in which the ship had never managed to leave the canal, people in need of homes would have brought their lives aboard. While the Egyptian government has been dragging people out of their homes in Warraq and Sinai as development plans move forward, people are forced into poorly planned habitats that pay no real attention to people’s needs or their economic activities.
“This drawing illustrates a forest that has been populated with housing pods made out of mycelium, conceptualizing the utilization of this material in modular architecture.
“Threshold: The focal point of the picture is a human standing on the water’s surface, facing the light (referring to the Truth) diffusing from a cracked wall in an uncanny cave. The philosophy of art and visual arts questioning the “reality” and “illusion” frequently refers to Platon’s “the allegory of Cave”. The picture uses a cave metaphor as well as a “the allegory of uterus” referring to the human’s first home which is conceptualized by the curvilinear forms.
“During its rapid growth in the late 1800s, New York City formed most of its current modern city fabric. As a city of immigrants with its own cultural insecurity, New York borrowed the architectural style of its diverse ancestral European roots in an attempt to create a historic urban context. This European influence, combined with the advancing construction technology and socioeconomic factors of the time, forged a unique architectural environment. Architectural elements of different origin, whether ornamental or functional, were melded into New York’s building facades; architectural manifestation of “insecurity”.
“This drawing imagines an alternate reality and economic reverie where the Great Depression never happened, a need for stripped to the basics skyscrapers averted, and the stylistic impressions of the era continued to roar for decades onward. This depicts a parallel Chicago, devoid of modernist glassy structures. A staggered stone skyline is a hazy backdrop to airships hovering at startlingly low altitudes.
“Depicted is a city that has yet to exist, one where passion, freedom and love fill the towers that rise above, an example of the pleasures art can bring, the idea that like people buildings represent individualism. What is depicted in drawing is a world where art, math and science become the forefront of the built environment and humans are able to liberate themselves from the natural world.
“Stair mazes will always be dynamic structures for the human spatial experience. Humans have the instinct to create infinite space through limited materials so that a certain relationship can be formed between limited life and the infinite universe. Stairs are important elements of a maze — connecting different heights and circulating up and down. The winding pink staircases, the main subject of this drawing, give the building a very large number of possible paths, forming a complex labyrinth.
The split between the “veil” and the “vault” reflected the museum’s two key spaces: the public exhibition space and the archive/storage space. The vault storage area is enveloped on all sides by a cellular exoskeleton structure made up of 2500 glass-fiber-reinforced concrete (GFRC) panels. This airy building envelope became the heart of the project, defining both the circulation and spatial experience, as well as the light quality throughout the design.
The 120,000-square-foot building features two floors of gallery space and is the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library, which has actively loaned collection works to museums around the world. In its inaugural year, The Broad attracted triple the number of its projected visitors. Eli and Edythe Broad also built a 24,000-square-foot public plaza, added streetscape improvements and enhanced pedestrian access along Grand Avenue.
The museum’s iconic veil is held up by 650 tons of steel lifts that span across the block-long gallery. The final building envelope was simplified from its original design, with its panels rationalized to aid the manufacturing process. During the day, shadows cast by the perforations articulate the façade, and at night, it glows like a lantern in downtown. The museum’s “veil” lifts at the corners, welcoming visitors into an active lobby and shop. On the top floor, visitors experience nearly an acre of column-free gallery space bathed in filtered light. The gallery has 23-foot-high ceilings, and the roof is supported by 7-foot-deep steel girders.
A key component of the veil is that it provides filtered natural daylight. The design team was able to realize hundreds of conical light openings for the building and create the front oculus from a parabolic curve. As the precast concrete manufacturer Willis explained, the design was made possible by using a five-axis, computerized-numerical control machine to carve molds out of high-density foam. Before skinning in fiberglass, the foam molds were sanded and sealed to create the negative formwork for the GFRC panels.
In turn, “the vault” plays a key role in shaping the museum experience from entry to exit. As the DS+R team explains, the heavy opaque mass is always in view, hovering midway in the building. Its carved underside shapes the lobby below and public circulation routes. Its top surface is the floor of the third-floor galleries, where ribbed ceilings and integrated lights echo the latticework of the external façade.
The museum is home to the 2,000 works of art in the Broad collection, which is among the most prominent holdings of postwar and contemporary art worldwide, and has launched an active program of rotating temporary exhibitions and innovative audience engagement. Highlights of the Broad collection include 1960s works by Andy Warhol, paintings and sculptures by Cy Twombly, and Yayoi Kusama’s immersive Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away.
Concealed underground, Yuyuan Station is Shanghai’s deepest transport hub. Elevating the experience of this subterranean space came with its challenges. Essential elements of the site, including the walls, columns and flooring, could not be altered. Nevertheless, the architects delivered an immersive scheme that consumes the senses of its users.
Revising religious architecture can be an imposing task, one that calls for reverence in the same breath as reinvention. This contemporary church in the Calabrian region of southern Italy negotiates that careful dance between tradition and innovation. While its organic, cross-shaped plan is inspired by some of the country’s most impressive Baroque churches, the interior is something of an inversion of the ornate domed designs of its predecessors.
In another life, this building in Spain’s Catalan region was a warehouse. Once a dark space of industry, it’s now been sensitively transformed into a modern light-filled residence. However, traces of the structure’s history still take center stage thanks to considerate spatial organization.
Situated in the Chinese city of Suzhou, this pioneering café was inspired by the concept of returning to the origin of life. The interior is an unexpected convergence of old and new, responding to the historic street outside while reimagining commercial typologies through a futuristic lens.
A performance complex of impressive proportions, the Zhengzhou Grand Theater encompasses four large venues with distinct architectural characters. In one hall, the walls ripple with a daring solid surface design in pink and orange hues. Narrow, repetitive channels envelop the room, resembling the interior architecture of a living, breathing organism, while the carefully considered contours were crafted to meet high acoustic standards.
Nestled in the arid Nevada desert, this residence reads as an extension of the topography, both externally and internally. Retractable walls of glass, which span across two different aspects, peel away in the main living and dining zone, erasing the boundary between natural and built environments. Exposed rock excavated from the site lines the walls of the living spaces and orients the home within the same tactile language as the rugged terrain.
This visually striking bar and restaurant in Beijing eschews right angles and straight lines. Approaching the curved threshold to this daring space is like delving into a warren. The arched entrance draws the eye down through a cocoon-like portal defined by dark, earthy colors.
Dating back to 1984, the lobby of this postmodern building in New York City underwent a contemporary update by architectural firm Gensler. While remaining respectful of the scheme’s heritage materials and capacious proportions, the towering, triple-height ceiling now arches softly around the space. The convex lines of the engraved oculus emphasize the vaulted barrel design, accentuated by the illuminated perimeter, which imparts a celestial, almost weightless effect.
