In pre-Columbian cultures monuments were erected towards the Sun, considered the universal essence of life, to enhance its spiritual relationship with the Earth. Under the strong sun of Mexico City we can now find the latest completion by the Spanish office Ensamble Studio: the Cervantes Theater. Surrounded by dense and scattered buildings, this theater hides in the ground with a stereotomic architecture that releases the ground floor, offering it for public use. A large metal grid rises on the site as the main piece, named ‘dovela’ (or keystone), returning the horizontal tension to the environment and providing a new scale between the ground and the sky. The massive perception of this structure becomes, when beneath it, light and subtle, extending the space to the sky and filtering sunlight. The theater experience thus begins with a ritual access that is as exciting as a constructive process in which the gravity of the metal parts of the keystone vanishes when combined as a reticular comb over the performance spaces located below...[+]