Mérida architect Arturo Carillo Ponce took home an international award for a multi-family project built on a triangular lot in the city’s north.
The Cemex Awards in Mexico City on Thursday awarded Carillo Ponce the top prize in the Affordable Housing category.
His project, the modernist Salvatierra 150, beat competitors from 19 countries in Latin America, North America and Europe.
Salvatierra 150 has 13 interconnected housing units set at right angles. Its exterior walls are covered with a mixture of concrete and chukum, a plaster finish developed by the Mayans who extracted resin from the bark of a local tree of the same name.
The Cemex jury was composed of representatives of architecture, construction, academia and private initiative from five countries. They evaluated what problems were solved in each entry’s construction and architecture, the incorporation of sustainability and the value that these projects generate for future generations.
Also on the Yucatán Peninsula, architects Salvador Macías and Claudia Muñoz Vargas took honors for Hotel Punta Caliza Holbox, in Quintana Roo. Xavier Antonio Abreu Sacramento won the Social Value category with his Playa del Carmen Trucks Terminal Project, also in Quintana Roo.
Other categories included Residential Housing (the winner was architect Fernanda Canales, from Mexico City), Commercial Buildings (Markus Neuber, from Germany), Collective Space (Jakub Wietrzny, from Poland) and Infrastructure (Robert Preston, from England).
