From Ameca to Talpa de Allende in the Mexican state of Jalisco, there is a 100-kilometer pilgrimage road, along which more than 2 million people pass annually during Holy Week. The local authorities decided to provide this route with infrastructure: both utilitarian structures and architectural objects that play an exclusively aesthetic role.
They approached the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei with his FAKE Design, the Swiss HHF, the Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena and the Elemental group, and others to create structures for this route that would not suffer from almost a year's desolation between the weeks of pilgrimage and would be little affected by the elements of nature (therefore, almost all pavilions will be built of concrete).
As part of the work on the "ruta del peregrino" (pilgrim's road) program, a series of "viewpoints" were created to highlight the natural beauty of the area.
The Aravena observation platform is a hollow concrete block overhanging the hillside; the HHF structure has the shape of a cylinder cut through by arched openings with a spiral staircase inside. Ai Weiwei called his project "Walk in a Straight Line": its narrow corridor made of stone blocks, running along the north-south axis along the pilgrim road, leads from a space buried in the soil to a platform towering above the landscape.
The Swiss bureau Christ & Gantenbein also designed a non-functional facility: their “column” marks a vantage point on a small hill. Derek Dellekamp Arquitectos and Tatiana Bilbao have designed a meeting place between four steles that delimit the ends of an imaginary cross. They, as well as the Periférica workshop, also developed projects for symbolic "sketes": concrete "rings" and folded, like origami, planes.
Utilities in this series include toilets and water tanks by Emiliano Godoya and his Godoylab bureau and Luis Aldrete's weather shelters.
