Centro Urbano Benito Juárez

The land was the site of the former Estadio Nacional, which was built in 1924 to serve not only as a sports stadium but as a political venue as well. Presidents Plutarco Elías Calles, Emilio Portes Gil and Lázaro Cárdenas all took their oaths of office here. The stadium was mostly abandoned by the end of the 1940s, as most of its functions moved to the Ciudad Deportiva. in an area known as Colonia Roma. This area also included the La Piedad city park, providing for already open space. Architect Mario Pani was behind this complex and several others. Prior, he created the Centro Urbano Miguel Alemán (commonly called the Multifamiliar Alemán) in the late 1940s, as an experiment in providing low cost housing. Its success prompted the commission of the Centro Urbano Benito Juárez by Mexican President Miguel Alemán Valdés to house government employees and their families. With this project, Pani and his associate Enrique del Moral looked to improve upon the stark lines of the Alemán project. The complex was inaugurated on 10 September 1952, the day of President Alemán's sixth report to Congress. ==Description of the original complex==

The original complex covered an area of 250,000 square meters. However, construction surface at the ground level only covered 16,000, leaving 80 percent of the grounds free for parks and sports areas. The buildings had four types, labeled "A" (largest) "B", "C" and "D", with a total apartment floor space of 700,000 square feet. There were no vehicular roads within the complex to allow pedestrians to walk around. All of the vehicular roads that entered terminated at a parking lot before one entered the area where the apartment buildings were located. These emphasis on space reduced Le Corbusier's recommendation of 1,000 residents per hectare to 240, and would make this the least densely populated of his apartment projects. The apartments were split into two levels, with the kitchen and living room on one floor and the bedrooms above or below. In this way, elevators only had to stop at every third floor. All apartment and elevator access was through open passages. Within the apartments, open space was created by eliminating walls between the living and dining rooms, which was popular in the United States starting in the 1950s and 1960s. Tenants disposed of garbage though chutes to the basement, a novel idea in Mexico at that time. ==Integration of artwork==

The complex was one of the largest projects in the world which integrates artwork into the architecture. Mérida received the commission in 1951, which took him three years. The murals covered an area of 4,000 m2. This project would become the most sophisticated realization of the concept in the post World War I period. Another example is the underpass walls along Orizaba Street. Mérida realized that motorists did not have time to contemplate peripheral images, so he placed elongated anthropomorphic figures which preceded and anticipated the forward motion of the cars. Each legend was depicted with a series of figures nearly eight feet tall each, which tell the story in frames as one ascends the stairs. The figures were chipped from the concrete in bas-relief then painted. Pani's and Mérida's work received mixed reviews, which often reflected the rivalry "Contemporáneo" school of art, and the more politicized Mexican traditional muralist movement. There was also reluctance to accept Mérida's work as "Mexican" as he remained a Guatemalan citizen his entire life. One example of this mixed message was from Siqueiros, who initially praised the "plastic integration" concept but then condemned both the art and the architecture as "bourgeois", poorly done and representing a return to the pre Mexican Revolution Porfiiran era. While Siquieros criticized Mérida's work as something attractive for tourists, in the following decades it would be Siquieros' work at the Ciudad Universitaria that would draw tourists, leaving the work at the apartment complex forgotten. ==1985 earthquake==

Before construction began, Pani had engineers test the ground, and it was declared solid. For this reason, the concrete structures of the complex were never reinforced. The building survived a number of major, but less severe quakes than the one in 1985, and little was known about how earthquakes affect superstructures in the 1950s. However, one earthquake, in 1957, did damage several buildings and led to their condemnation. Buildings A1, B2 and C3 of the Multifamiliar Juárez complex partially collapsed, and a number of residents died. Many of the buildings could have been saved, but it proved uneconomical to do so. Pensiones Civiles erred when they created the rental contracts with tenants by neglecting to add a clause allowing them to raise rents. By 1985, there were tenants paying as little as 200 pesos a month for rent. (US$25 in 1950, $.10USD in 1985). For this reason, maintenance of the buildings and grounds suffered until it became impossible. The government decided that this was the time to condemn nearly all of the buildings, with only several still remaining. The earthquake essentially made the complex disappear. The destruction of the buildings destroyed nearly all of the mural work. Evidence of these remain in photographs and the preliminary sketches, which Mérida donated to UNAM. One student of Mérida's Alfonso Soto Soria, used some of the original designed to create a monument to the work done at the Juárez complex. This can be found at an apartment complex called Fuentes Brotantes. Like other planned urban communities of the mid 20th century, what remains of the Conjunto Urbano Benito Juárez has continued to deteriorate. There are problems with lack of parking, crowded streets, abandoned units and crime. Much of the land on which the destroyed structures were built has not been redeveloped. ==References==