In his “A Concrete Atlantis,” Reyner Banham posits “a casual connection, conscious and cultural, between modern architecture and industrial utilitarian structures of an industrial epoch.” From Loos and Behrens to Gropius and Le Corbusier, at the beginning of the 20th century, a constant back and forth was established between architecture and industrial construction—until now, marginalized in architecture—that would continue to be a characteristic of contemporary architecture. Architecture was tasked to reinvent the industrial world, understood as the invention of an image that moves between the operative logic and the logotype.

This latter commission presented an additional challenge besides its relationship with the existing facility. The UNESCO’s designation of Queretaro’s historic city center as a World Heritage Centre in 1996 had unforeseen consequences that even expanded to the city’s industrial periphery. As a result of this designation, the new building was to have an arched porch, as rooted in tradition. Rojkind Arquitectos responded to this challenge with a reinterpretation not only of the arch but also of the porch. If the arch is nothing else than a fragment of a cupola, in the same vein, the cupola is an amplified arch when it rotates around its own axis. The cupola meets the reference criteria of the arch without turning it into a cliché. In this case, a series of spheres intersect and multiply like foam forming the origin of a continuous open space, a portico. This space expands while another one, made of orthogonal boxes clad in satin-mirrored glass, restrains the proliferation of the spheres and houses the specific program requirements for the lab.