Studio Viktor Sørless and Estudio Juiñi have designed the Xinatli museum to tower over an area of jungle in Mexico that is being reforested after years of illegal logging.
Norwegian firm Studio Viktor Sørless and Mexican office Estudio Juiñi plan to build the museum out of wood and earth in a project led by Mexican art collector Fernanda Raíz.
Its design is informed by ancient step pyramids, with angled volumes in different sizes staggered up a vertical core.
The museum, which will be dedicated to research in the arts and sciences, will stand guard over a 90-hectare clearing that is going to be replanted with trees.
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Norwegian-German Studio Viktor Sørless together with Mexican Estudio Juiñi have unveiled Xinatli, a research museum in the Mexican jungle. Rethinking the stepped pyramid form, the project raises the widest layer from its base to the middle of the building and into the surrounding tree canopy.
Courtesy of bloomimages and bloomrealities
The re-imagined pyramid will consist of earth and wood loadbearing elements. These materials will be highlighted by working with local craftsmen; Chukum resin and sisal fiber will increase the weather resistance and tensile strength of the building to cope with the tropical conditions of the nearby rainforest. The design was made for Mexican art collector Fernanda Raíz, and the museum will be for biodiversity, human communities, art, and science.
The Indigenous Literature of the Americas
In late August, Mexico City and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico signed an agreement to teach Náhuatl language and culture to Nahua (Aztec) students in Santa Ana Tlacotenco in the high southern reaches of the city. The signatories were a deputy mayor of the city, the coordinator of humanities at the university, and an honored witness,
Miguel León-Portilla, the leading scholar in the world of Náhuatl history and culture. It had been many years, perhaps centuries, since a great Mexican university had educated Nahua students in their own culture and offered a diploma to those who completed the course satisfactorily. According to some observers, it had not happened since the calmecac (school for nobles) was destroyed with the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521. Náhuatl culture and language had been studied in Mexican universities, but not taught as a living culture. It was yet another instance of a resurgence of indigenous culture in the
The new findings are documented in Pérez de Heredia y Bíró´s new book
“
La Casa Real de Cocom: Una Historia de Yucatán” or the “
The Royal House of Cocom: A history of Yucatán .” The authors trace the origin of the Cocom lineage from the Terminal Classic period to the arrival of the Toltecs in the early 10th century AD. The book also explains that the Cocom lineage may have originated in the kingdom of Komkom, whose capital city coincides with the current site of Buenavista del Cayo, in Belize.
The recently published book, The Royal House of Cocom: A history of Yucatán, by Eduardo Perez de Heredia and Peter Biro. (
Mayan Toponyms
Its translation into Spanish means, in that same order, Star, Raccoon, Priest, Snake, Tooth, Glass, God, Flint, Infant, Charcoal Grass, Cotton, Worm, Animal Skin, and Son.
The Cocom documents are currently housed in the Southwest Museum in Pasadena, USA, which has been closed for years and is not accessible. There are fears among academics about their conservation status.
Rediscovered
These documents were bought by Willard at the beginning of the 20th century but were not rediscovered until the 1980s by anthropologist Ruth Gubler.
The Superior Temple of Jaguars or Temple of the Tigers, in whose glyphs the Cocom were identified, was considered by John Lloyd Stephens as