↑The Earthscraper proposes burrowing down into the heart of Mexico City to create a new civic structure which preserves the city’s historic urban landscape while serving the needs of a modern metropolis. Designed by BNKR Arquitectura, the Earthscraper is an inverted pyramid whose base is the surface of Mexico City’s main public square and traditional center the Zocalo, and which is bordered by the city’s most treasured monuments–the Cathedal, the National Palace and the City Government buildings. Such a central site demands a decisive urban strategy that negotiates and reconciles the city’s seemingly disparate histories. BNKR Arquitectura’s pyramid does just that by literally cutting through and exposing the site’s layers of history.

The proposal is to dig down 300 meters all in all. Read ↑more at the Architizer blog, there are more pictures, too. In various comments around the web and the media, the futuristic project is hailed as an innovative and visionary solution for overcrowded urban spaces. Well, it immediately reminded me of the city in the legendary comic-series ‘↑The Incal‘ by ↑Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud and ↑Alejandro Jodorowsky (1981-1989). Already on the second page of the first album, ‘L’Incal Noir,’ we are treated to the sight of a monstrous sky-high architecture like in Fritz Lang’s ‘↵Metropolis‘ (1927). Only many pages later does the reader realize that the city starts at the planet’s surface and reaches down from there. Here is the story’s inglorious anti-hero, private eye John Difool, taking a dive from ‘Suicide Alley.’ I guess something similar will happen, when the gigantic sheet of glass, by which the architects want to cover Mexico City’s earthscraper, breaks.