Santa Elena
Urban regeneration project and children’s public library
Located within the affluent municipality of San Pedro Garza García, the community of Santa Elena originated as an informal settlement built along a stormwater runoff channel. This precarious geography historically resulted in chronic flooding, creating a stark divide between the settlement’s vulnerability and the surrounding affluent infrastructure. Our intervention acknowledges this socio-spatial friction, transforming a site of environmental hazard into a resilient anchor for the community.
The project’s primary architectural intervention is the adaptive reuse of a decommissioned stormwater drainpipe, reimagined as a children’s public library. In a move toward non-extractive design, the original structure of the drainpipe, including its layers of street art and graffiti, was preserved in its raw state.
This decision acknowledged the transformative potential of repurposed infrastructure.
