Walking through the historic center of Chihuahua means living with the intense sun of the desert. At the intersection of Avenida Independencia and Calle Victoria, Plaza de Armas is one of the city's most active pedestrian spaces, where thousands of people cross every day. The former vehicular crossing, now reclaimed for pedestrians, revealed a simple but essential need: a place to stop beneath the shade.
PASO NARA emerges from this condition as a temporary pavilion that introduces a moment of pause within the constant movement of the square. Rather than interrupting the existing circulation, the intervention establishes a new spatial condition along the pedestrian route: a lightweight structure that can be crossed, occupied, and discovered while remaining completely connected to its surroundings.
From a distance, the pavilion appears as a precise and colorful object within the historic urban fabric. As visitors approach and enter, however, its scale and geometry begin to change the experience of the place. The movement of pedestrians, conversations, and sounds of the square remain present, while the curved enclosure creates a temporary sense of shelter. An opening at the top frames a fragment of the sky, turning the simple gesture of looking upward into part of the spatial experience.
In Chihuahua, shade is not simply an environmental amenity; it is a basic condition for inhabiting public space. PASO NARA takes this reality as its starting point, providing a place to meet, wait, rest for a few minutes, or simply observe the city from a different perspective without prescribing a specific use.
Geometry, Culture and Climate
The geometry of PASO NARA interprets the spatial logic of traditional Rarámuri skirts, whose layered and flexible construction accompanies movement while providing protection from the surrounding environment. Rather than reproducing their appearance literally, the pavilion translates this behavior into an architectural strategy.
The enclosure opens toward the ground, expanding the shaded area available to pedestrians, while gradually narrowing toward the top. This geometry concentrates natural light and directs the visitor's gaze toward the sky. The resulting section establishes a continuous transition between openness and shelter, creating a space that is simultaneously exposed to the city and protected from its harshest environmental condition.
The pavilion's gradient of colors evokes the changing tones of the desert landscape at sunrise and sunset, reinforcing its
relationship with the territory surrounding the historic center.
Its name brings together two of the ideas behind the project. PASO refers to the everyday movement that defines the site, while NARA alludes to the wood that forms the structure and to the cultural reference underlying its geometry. The pavilion does not seek to stop this movement. Instead, it accompanies it, allowing the pause to occur when each visitor chooses to enter and experience the space from within.
Plywood as Structure and Envelope
PASO NARA is built entirely from plywood, exploring the material not only as a cladding element but as an integrated structural and spatial system. Its curved enclosure is composed of bent plywood panels that take advantage of the material's natural flexibility to create a continuous, lightweight surface.
The curvature gives movement to the roof, changes the way daylight reaches the wood, and produces shifting patterns of light and shadow throughout the day. The material therefore becomes an active component of the pavilion's environmental and
spatial performance rather than simply a finish. The structure is assembled through a mechanical jointing system based on gravity, compression, and wooden wedges,
minimizing the use of conventional fasteners. The precision of the connections allows the individual components to work together as a single structural system while simplifying assembly and disassembly.
This approach also responds to the temporary nature of the intervention. Instead of treating the pavilion as a disposable structure, PASO NARA was conceived as a system that can be dismantled, transported, and reconstructed in another context.
Digital Fabrication and Assembly
Every component of PASO NARA was digitally fabricated using three-axis CNC milling from digital files. Digital fabrication allowed the team to explore the structural and formal possibilities of plywood while maintaining a high degree of precision throughout the manufacturing process.
The fabrication strategy was developed around the relationship between digital geometry, material behavior, and physical assembly. Components were designed to fit together without extensive adjustments on site, reducing construction time and allowing the pavilion to be assembled as a coordinated system.
The result is not simply a digitally fabricated object, but a construction system in which digital production becomes a means of connecting design, material, structure, and assembly. The same precision that enables the pavilion's complex geometry also makes its disassembly and potential reuse possible.
Because the system relies on three-axis CNC fabrication and mechanically assembled plywood components, its logic can be reproduced using widely available fabrication technologies. This opens the possibility of adapting the system to other sites, scales, and temporary public-space interventions.
Taller del Desierto 2026
PASO NARA was developed during the 2026 edition of Taller del Desierto, an architectural design-and-build workshop organized by the Instituto Superior de Arquitectura y Diseño (ISAD) in Chihuahua, Mexico.
The project brought together students, faculty, and advisors in a process that moved from conceptual development and digital modeling to fabrication, assembly, and installation in the historic center of the city. The workshop treated the pavilion as both
an architectural intervention and a testing ground for construction techniques, material behavior, and digital fabrication.
Located at one of the most active pedestrian intersections in Chihuahua's historic center, PASO NARA operates at the intersection of movement and stillness, exposure and shelter, digital precision and material behavior.
The project explores how a lightweight intervention can transform the experience of an everyday public space without altering its fundamental circulation. Rather than imposing a new destination on the plaza, it introduces a temporary condition of shade
and pause.
Between the constant movement of the city and the quietness of the shade, PASO NARA invites pedestrians to stop for a
moment, look upward, and experience a familiar place from a different perspective.
