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The new pavilion realized by Mexican architect Michel Rojkind for the Swiss-based multinational, Nestlé, is another gem of a project. Two years ago Rojkind built a clever pavilion - bright red, like the Swiss flag, and with a folded, origami-like envelope - at that company’s chocolate factory, near Toluca on the outer fringes of the Mexico City conurbation. Now he has constructed a more permanent-looking structure at a second Nestlé plant. This industrial facility is on the periphery of Querétaro, the distinguished colonial city a few hours north of the Mexican capital.
Rojkind has placed his new structure forward of the factory proper, on a swathe of smooth green lawn next to Querétaro’s busy ring road. It’s a pavilion or casino in the sense of freestanding, and somewhat ornamental, little building. It’s also an advertisement, an enigmatic three-dimensional icon that works, without words or graphics, to signify a sleek contemporaneity (close by, more traditional billboards and a painted water tower directly brand such Nestlé products as Carnation Evaporated Milk). Rojkind’s new building is in fact a small laboratory.
You notice first the elevations, or curious façade morphology. The building has two stories with a contiguous flat parapet and flanks that are remarkably sheer. Initially, these may appear to be of some pale-colored metal. As you approach, however, you detect the hue of the exterior adjusting to light and realize that its outermost membrane is in fact glass: flush panels of glass with a satin finish on the outer surface and mirror on the reverse or inner face. As you circle the building, this cool exterior patina blurs from silvery grey to blue to green according to reflections and shadow.
In contrast to this sleek ethereal skin, each lower façade is eroded to create bulbous niches. Painted an almost shocking orange/yellow (saturated papaya?), this combination of geometry and vivid coloration instigates a formal and aesthetic tease...
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