Designed by the team Archintorno in collaboration with the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Polytechnic University of Turin, this innovation center is situated in the town called Pensamiento Liberal Mexicano, in the state of Oaxaca, and is part of a whole series of cooperation projects aimed at encouraging the participation of the region’s indigenous communities.

Sheltering a workshop for making preserves, an office space, and a multipurpose hall in two floors, the building was raised with local manual labor and vernacular materials and systems, all the way from the foundations to the roof.

Placed over continuous ditches, the foundation was built with local stone bonded in footings whose truncated cone sections made it possible to save on material while eliminating dead weight on the ground. Positioned over the footings is a beam of reinforced concrete that effectively absorbs the weight of the upper structure formed by robust modular mud walls, put up with successive elevations, whose thickness of 40 centimeters give them excellent hygrothermal regulation properties. These loadbearing walls then support a slab of 8 x 20 centimeter wooden beams, and over this rises the skeleton of the second floor level, a frame formed by crossbars and finished with a slanting roof expressly designed to collect rainwater. The building is clad with a mobile wall that functions as a parasol, made with strips of small squares that were left over from the construction of the rest of the wooden structure.