AA student Maite Garcia-Lascurain has been awarded an honourable mention for her submission to the Instituto Español de Arquitectura’s Félix Candela ‘Casa Agave’ prize. The project, titled ‘Octli’ was completed with UNAM student Ana Lucero Villaseñor and will be part of a travelling exhibition around Spain and Mexico in 2021. The project tackles the traditional and emblematic popular Mexican drink and its connection to the land in Mexico. Read more below.

'Scattered in the Mexican territory are small treasures, rebellious against the homogenizing changes of globalism that threaten an identity. In Cuatlaco Hidalgo, a small town of ejidatarios, there is still that rebellious spirit.
Those who live here tell of what was once the golden age of pulque: an emblematic popular drink whose decadence gave way to the rising acceptance of beer, its greatest rival. But they will also tell about its resilience, the drink that years later promises to rise from near oblivion by those who seek something different, authentic within their roots.

Octli becomes the measure to restore the landscape in Cuatlaco that considers each of the stages of the pulque process. The cyclical relationship of the maturity of the maguey, divided in a gridded manner by production batches, allows one to enter the depths of the pulque field in a progression corresponding to the process of its growth. Meanwhile, those who come to witness the millenary profession of the tlachiqueros, observe the spectacle being elevated or submerged by the same pathways that frame the land.

The tinacal, the guiding axis of the complex, is constantly related to the maguey landscape and its use for the production of pulque, leading the entrance to Cuatlaco and sheltering the community's fermentation tubs in its interior. The tinacal not as a production space dependent on an external authority, or even as a personal outlet, but as the main activity of the town, a place of conviviality as well as a tourist attraction.

Octli, the maguey house in Cuatlaco; recovers the milk-coloured, thick and yeast-like flavoured drink and recognizes it as the natural vocation of the site.'