As part of a new understanding of education and in the pursuit of fostering a new thinking process in students, the school decided to evolve the subterrain space and link it to the ground and first level. Along with the expertise of the MAYER HASBANI office, flexible, inspiring and playful spaces were designed within the existing building belonging to the nineties of Mexican brutalism.

On the first level of the existing building, a new terrace, cafeteria, private room and kitchen were designed. The cafeteria is shown as a new site that in addition to its basic function, allows students to have new work and meeting spaces. To connect the program on the first floor, stairs outlined by delicate organic lines connect level one with the exhibition spaces. Downstairs, the visual and spatial textures continue through wavy walls that blur the corners and provide access to the Aula Magna, Auditorium and bathrooms.

On the opposite side of the Aula Magna, we find a striking example of how environmental graphic design and architecture combine to achieve great spatial effects: a crimson threshold frames the entrance to the new educational spaces that color the student’s vision. To one side, there is the radio booth, the media lab, two multipurpose rooms, two computer rooms and one music room. Under the premise of flexibility, the furniture that accompanies the classrooms is totally reconfigurable to adapt to the specific needs of each session, while the “makerspace” rooms maintain a manual workshop configuration for the realization of creative activities.

When crossing the crimson threshold and descending the stairs, we find one of the great articulating spaces: the media library, with interior wooden steps that break the emptiness of a great double height that dominates the space, creating a more welcoming scale and inviting a multiplicity of uses and positions to encourage the students to meet and hang. When we reach the end of the wooden bleachers, a reading and study room connects the area to the classrooms and other study rooms. On the other hand, as the height is reduced due to the original structure of the building, the existing dimensions are used to create a library where both furniture, walls and floor are bathed in a striking yellow that gives rise to a new, original and challenging model for new generations.

In conclusion, every corner within the intervention of MAYER HASBANI office manages to turn the common educational space into a new paradigm of education where architecture transforms walls into sensations and establishes a new learning process through the synergy between architectural design and environmental graphic design.

Location: Mexico City
Client: Colegio Hebreo Monte Sinaí
Type: Educational
Area: 4,164 sqm
Writing date: 2017
Construction date: 2019
Architect: Mayer Hasbani
Project Team: Paola López Solis, Santiago Caballero, Lucía Ron Pedrique, Rolando Gomez
Status: Built

Construction team

Construction: Arq. Jacobo Zagha / CHMS
Structure: CMF
Facades: Un Modulo
Lighting Design: Luis Lozoya
Landscape: Ambiente Arquitectos
Branding: Cobalto Studio
Acoustics: SAAD ACÚSTICA
Photography: Luis Gordoa

The Center de Studies OD, located in Mexico City, is an enclosure focused on religious preparation and formation, as well as a place of worship of Judaism, located in the middle of one of the most emblematic colonies of the City. The program of this Center of Studies is developed in 4 levels and a basement, turning internally the nave of the building towards the east following the tradition of Jewish prayer directed towards this direction.

The concept of the enclosure is composed by the interaction of two bodies, one given by the rectangular shape of the land and another body that incorporates the main program of the building designed with a rotation angle towards the east; this is how a bay is created that marks the access to the building; to the public and private spaces and their circulation. A tucked glass façade defines the pedestrian entrance to the study center by providing natural light to the building’s lobby; this light entry is modeled once it enters the campus through geometrically shaped ceilings that give different sensations in the building’s spaces in a set of volumes that are suspended to house different program areas; all study center spaces are naturally illuminated with vertical light entrances.

This building promotes a warm atmosphere in the nature of its materials, that is why the apparent partition has been chosen as the main material of the project for its nobility and humility, predominating in public spaces and facade towards the street, where the position in which the partition is arranged creates a unique skin for each space where it is applied; it is also combined in some spaces with marble in walls and floors.

The OD study center is presented to the city as a discreet and silent building where its architectural expression reaches the splendor in the dance that sunlight has with its walls inside; a succession of spaces that always look to the sky seeking to reach divinity.

Location: Mexico City
Client: Private
Type: Religious
Area: 600 sqm
Writing date: 2016
Architect: Mayer Hasbani
Project Team: Alma Montiel, Nelly Hernández, Alejandra Ramírez
Status: In construction

Construction team

Structure: Izquierdo Ingenieros y Asociados
MEP: BIMSTUDIO
Topography: Grupo TARC
Lighting Design: Lighteam
Landscape: DLC
Acustics: SAAD ACÚSTICA
Renders: Studio ZVR3D

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