Ricardo Serrano Ayvar

We live among ruins of excess.
Towers erected to look down from above —not to look at each other.
Babel left us with broken tongues; noise, a spent promise.
This place does not seek height: it seeks depth.
A tree, not a tower. Roots that remember the body;
a trunk where silence makes us equal;
an open crown to the light where we speak again with the whole word.
Here water is not ornament: it is memory in movement.
Here shadow does not hide: it reveals.
We do not come to negotiate an impossible homogeneity,
we come to sustain difference without breaking.
If the world scattered us in a thousand accents,
may this garden teach us again the language of care.
A place where entering is a rite and leaving, a calling.
Less tower, more tree.
Less shouting, more listening.
Less spectacle, more shared truth.

 

More Than Regeneration: Alchemy for Living

This challenge required generating a completely different strategy and drawing from other areas of knowledge and wisdom to design a working and conceptual model that addresses a profoundly human need in the face of fragmentation of being.

If we as humanity are sufficiently sincere and authentic, we can identify that this problem has been part of our history, becoming intergenerational wounds that permeate through time and recur. But what if the wounds we cause are not only due to our way of conducting ourselves in the world and with others, but these wounds also produce spaces that impact people's behavior, and as a consequence, we provoke fragmentation and human pain?

We are not aware of the intergenerational pain we can cause. But then, what is the path? We as designers and architects, as a starting point, must look to other disciplines and other knowledge. Even when they are not fully accepted.

I found it necessary to observe the history of cultures, and this led me to observe primordial patterns, the archetypes. These range from personalities to complete stories and situational environments. This led me to look more closely at depth psychology and mythopoetics.

​

Contest Context / Proposed Problem

The competition is set in the context of an ultra-materialistic society dominated by ego (which creates duality and provokes confrontation), the need to overcome local consciousness and cross the threshold of supra-consciousness through meditation in the spiritual place of an architecture that serves the encounter of humanity with the true meaning of Life.

​

However, the following was additionally identified:

• Post-pandemic cultural, spiritual, and epistemic fragmentation; cities as landscapes of speed and oblivion.

• Architecture reduced to spectacle/commodity; loss of rites of passage and common languages.

• Competition challenge: imagine an urban, ecumenical, non-dogmatic spiritual place that accompanies processes of personal and collective transformation.

​

It didn't ask for aesthetic restoration; it asked for alchemy.

If we listen without fear, we hear the repetition of the wound—

those intergenerational plots that slip into our gestures... and into our spaces.

How much of behavior is born from the place we inhabit?

To answer, I had to leave the plane: walk with depth psychology, enter mythopoetics,

read archetypes as maps of return.

Only then did form cease to be object and return to being threshold.

​

Project Thesis

The project proposal was based on the following:

• Counter-model to the Tower of Babel: from excess and confusion toward radical hospitality.

• Architecture as initiatory device (journey of thresholds, silence, light, water, vegetation).

• Axis mundi ↔ Architectural Tree: roots (body), trunk (rite/silence), crown (knowledge/dialogue).

• Systems thinking: individual-community-environment (ecological model of the "Interior Garden").

​

Additionally, this challenge forced us to propose an entire theoretical thesis and design a transdisciplinary model that has resulted in a personal line of research to face the fragmentation of being, a conceptual model and framework of psycho-spatial enactivism.

​

Spatial Strategy (three cores + pathways)

​

1. Living Matter

Body care, somatic practices, nurseries, steam baths/temazcal; bioclimatic and sensory connection.

​

2. Multi-sacred Silence

Open chapels/oratories, silence courtyards, water mirrors; interreligious hospitality without uniformization.

​

3. Knowledge and Dialogue

Open library, forums, pedagogical workshops; construction of common language and supra-consciousness.

​

Initiatory Sequence

Deceleration threshold → contemplative paths (living pergolas, wooden bridges, living water) → stations (roots/trunk/crown) → vegetable plazas and pauses → endings with symbolic light/water/fire.

A complete campus for encountering oneself and others.

​

Materiality and Atmosphere

• Local stone (rootedness), wood (warmth), living water (sound/climate/ritual), native/medicinal vegetation (ecosystem), filtered light (revealing chiaroscuro).

• Poetic but concrete architecture: atmospheres that invite, without oppressive solemnity.

​

Guiding Principles (operational synthesis)

• Ecological regeneration | Adaptive resilience | Integral sustainability

• Community participation | Spatial-behavioral transformation

​

Main Archetypes Used in the Proposal

Axis mundi / Tree of Life · Ziggurat (ritual ascension) · Hanging gardens · Labyrinth / Initiatory path · Living water / Fountain / Fire · Threshold/Portal (triple) · Mandala / Sacred geometry · Spiral · Cave/Underworld (silent underground rooms) · Agora (dialogue) · Cloister / Roofless temple.

​

Results

​

Design and Concept Proposal Results:

• Creation of an Ecumenical Campus with three cores (Living Matter, Multi-sacred Silence, Knowledge and Dialogue).

• Multisensory experience for visitors: living water, filtered light, medicinal vegetation.

• Flexible and open spaces, adaptable to multiple traditions and rituals.

• Contemplative routes that function as initiatory journeys, fostering introspection and coexistence.

• Local materiality that improves bioclimatic comfort and reduces environmental footprint.

• Microenvironments: microclimates, local water/vegetation cycle, low maintenance.

• The Collective and Space: interreligious dialogue, regenerated social fabric, new urban foundational myth.

​

Human and Spiritual Results

• Healing intergenerational wounds: offering a space where emotional and cultural fractures find echo and transform into reconciliation experiences.

• Radical hospitality: welcoming plurality of creeds and practices without imposing uniformity, fostering mutual respect and self-encounter.

• Interior transformation: inviting visitors to an initiatory journey that activates archetypal memory and connects them with body, mind, spirit, and community.

​

Architectural and Urban Results

• New foundational myth: inserting in the city a space that, beyond the functional, acts as a shared narrative of supra-consciousness and care.

• Architecture as relational device: a living environment of water, light, stone, vegetation, and silence that not only contains but accompanies transformation processes.

• Urban and ecological regeneration: reintroducing biodiversity, living water, and local materiality to reestablish environmental and bioclimatic balances.

​

Social and Community Results

• Social fabric reconstitution: generating a coexistence place where fragmented communities find common ground.

• Interreligious dialogue: fostering dynamics of peace, cultural exchange, and recognition of difference as shared wealth.

• Active participation: involving local communities in space design, use, and management, enhancing appropriation and social sustainability.

​

Systemic and Strategic Results

• Ecological model of being: Functions as a living laboratory where human and environmental dimensions integrate in a relational ecosystem.

• Initiatory architecture: Does not cancel market or spectacle dimensions but subordinates them to vital experience, positioning design as a catalyst of meaning.

• Scalability and replicability: Its conceptual framework is transferable to other sectors: education, health, culture, or even purpose-driven real estate developments, offering an adaptable regenerative model.

• ESG contribution: Beyond technical metrics, it provides cultural and emotional regeneration, offering companies and cities an example of authenticity and resilience.

​

Systemic and Strategic Results (Continued)

• Rehumanization of routine: Spaces that invite pause, contemplation, and daily dialogue, beyond consuming images or fleeting experiences.

• Conscious environments: Places that awaken bodily and emotional perception as part of common acts—walking, sitting, meeting.

• Bond regeneration: Communities can recognize themselves again on common ground, where shared life doesn't depend on spectacle but on mutual care.

​

Expected Impact

• Cultural and spiritual regeneration: Proposes a new foundational myth for cities, capable of resignifying their social and symbolic fabric.

• Collective healing: Spaces that act as reconciliation catalysts in contexts wounded by violence, materialist excess, or fragmentation.

• Urban resilience: Integrates climate and ecological adaptation strategies that strengthen city sustainability.

• Transformation of dwelling: Invites a culture of authenticity and care, beyond commercial logic or media superficiality.

• Intergenerational legacy: An infrastructure of meaning and spirituality that transcends generations, sowing a common language of hospitality and transcendence.

​

ESG and Strategic Sustainability Contribution

• Environmental (E): Use of native vegetation, living water, local materials → environmental footprint reduction and ecological restoration.

• Social (S): Radical hospitality, interreligious dialogue, intergenerational healing → cultural regeneration and community cohesion.

• Governance (G): Participatory model, transparent space management, possibility of linking communities in its administration → innovation in territorial governance.

Added value: This project not only meets conventional environmental or social metrics; it offers a new category of cultural-emotional ESG that can inspire emerging indicators: spiritual well-being, collective meaning, symbolic resilience.

​

Vision and Systemic Transformation

The project is not limited to a specific architectural gesture or formal compliance, but seeks to activate change at multiple simultaneous scales:

• Individual scale → heal intergenerational wounds and reconnect visitors with their "interior garden."

• Community scale → create a meeting space where diversity is not passively tolerated but lived as radical hospitality.

• Urban scale → reintroduce the sacred and symbolic in the contemporary city, counterbalancing consumption logic and fragmentation.

• International and planetary scale → dialogue with global crises (climate, social, spiritual) through a model of ecological and cultural regeneration.

Here the project becomes a living laboratory of transformation, where design is proposed as a tool of social and cultural alchemy, more than as an isolated object.