El Muro Pavilion Turns a 56-Meter Wall Into a Passage in Mexico City

A 184-foot-long wall of scaffolding and translucent fabric now cuts across Mexico City's Alameda Central — and you can walk straight through it. El Muro, the winning pavilion of the 28th edition of the Arquine competition for the MEXTRÓPOLI 2026 Festival, was designed by ARQLIQ arquitetura, Entremeios Arquitetura, Márcio Flávio Motta and Ismael Torrano. The project covers 112 square meters and was completed in 2026.

The proposal stems from a single gesture, according to the architects: "a line that cuts across the Alameda Central." Located near the Fountain of Mercury, the wall crosses three paths in the park, transforming an element historically associated with division and separation into an experience of connection, passage, and encounter.

The structure is built from multidirectional scaffolding supplied by manufacturers Andamios ICAM and Grupo INOFE. El Muro stands approximately 20 feet (6 meters) tall, 6.5 feet (2 meters) wide, and 184 feet (56 meters) long. Both longitudinal sides carry cladding in three patterns of fabric with varying shades and levels of transparency.

That material choice drives the pavilion's central effect. From a distance, the construction reads as a continuous surface — almost a massive wall blocking the path. As a visitor approaches, the initial impression dissolves. The fabric allows light, bodies, trees, and the movement of the Alameda itself to filter through, gradually revealing what seemed hidden. What initially appeared to be a barrier becomes a passage.

The architects describe this dual condition — being a wall and, at the same time, not entirely a wall — as the heart of the experience. The intervention creates an interval within the park: a place where paths cross, and where one can pause, walk through, look, and perceive the space differently. Rather than blocking the journey, the wall introduces a pause into it.

The team frames the pavilion as a test case for temporary architecture. "If temporary architecture is also a laboratory — a moment where an idea is tested against reality — this wall is built precisely on that experience," they write. Its structure functions as a large canvas that captures the light, shadows, bodies, and movements of the Alameda, recording, if only for a brief period, everything that happens around it.

By the architects' account, the wall ceases to be an object placed in the park and becomes part of it: an artifact of the crossroads, traversed by different flows and encounters — a place of passage, of pause, and perhaps, of wonder. Photography of the completed pavilion is by André Miguel Coronha.