In favour of public space

The Prize exhibition, “Polis: 7 Lessons from the European Prize for Urban Public Space”, will be open until 3 April in one of the most charismatic open spaces in the centre of Mexico City, the Alameda Central next to the Palacio de Bellas Artes. This is one of the venues for several activities making up this year’s Mextrópoli, el Festival Internacional de Arquitectura y Ciudad. The Prize exhibition will be sharing the space with university pavilions as well as other exhibitions like “Mercados De La CDMX” (Markets of Mexico City) which will reflect on a new kind of market for the megalopolis, comparing it with markets in other major cities of the world. 

For four days Mextrópoli aims to be an open window whereby it will be possible to experience Mexico City through its architecture. It seeks to create a setting in which people can reconsider and enjoy the city as well as encouraging critical and participative activity with different kinds of knowledge, exchanges and new visions for the city in a forum consisting of dialogues, workshops, urban itineraries, exhibitions, pavilions and several open-air events.

The exhibition which is about to be presented in Mexico will be the third time Polis has been shown abroad after New York in 2014, at the Center for Architecture Foundation, and then St Petersburg in 2016. On this latest occasion, the exhibition has been updated with some of the prizewinning works from the last award of the European Prize for Urban Public Space in order to explain the seven challenges now facing European cities: “Memory”, “Mobility”, “Mixture”, “Waterfronts”, “Peripheries”, “Markets” and “Democracy”. With its presence in the Festival it once again upholds examples of good practice around Europe for more habitable, inclusive and sustainable cities.