Finding a Sense of Place: Javi Barcelo’s City Immersion Scholarship Journey to Mexico City
B.Arch ’27 student Javi Barcelo shares how his City Immersion Scholarship experience in Mexico City shaped his research, perspective and direction for his capstone project during CAPLA's Opportunities Day event.
For Javi Barcelo, B.Arch ’27, architecture is deeply connected to place, culture and community. His City Immersion Scholarship gave him the opportunity to explore those connections firsthand in Mexico City, an experience that ultimately helped shape the direction of his capstone project.
During his third-year spring semester, Barcelo connected with an art curator and gallerist in Mexico City through Sandra Bernal. The connection led him to an art residency in the city, where he spent six weeks beginning to develop ideas for his capstone.
After completing the residency at the beginning of his fourth year, Barcelo began considering whether Mexico City could become the focus of his capstone. He worked with Laura Hollengreen, associate dean for academic affairs, and Susannah Dickinson, associate professor of architecture, who served as his capstone instructor and mentor. He also began applying for scholarships to support additional research.
But Barcelo knew he needed to return before committing to a direction.
“I wanted to go again to see what I wanted to focus on in the city,” he said.
He had seen peers enter their capstone without fully understanding the context of their sites and struggle as a result. For Barcelo, another visit would allow him to spend more time in the city, listen and observe before determining what questions his project should address.
Barcelo’s first residency focused on gentrification and younger audiences. He observed a lower-income community being displaced, attended protests and documented what he was seeing through photographs and video.
When he returned to Mexico City through the City Immersion Scholarship, he arrived with a more defined research question.
“I had this clear vision of trying to resist gentrification and creating an architectural system that will prevent cultural dilution,” he said.
Mexico City became an especially meaningful place to investigate those ideas. Barcelo describes the city as a place where Mexican cultures from across the country come together, while also experiencing significant outside investment and tourism. People from other countries were increasingly coming to the city, renting property and working remotely, contributing to rising prices and changes in local communities.
Barcelo was particularly interested in places where the effects of economic development and tourism were especially visible. He focused on poorer areas and chose to stay there during his second visit so he could better understand the communities and their experiences.
One of the places that stood out to him was Xochimilco, an area where he saw both deep cultural history and the pressures of a growing tourist economy. The area, he said, represents a part of Mexico City that retains elements of the way the Aztecs originally developed the region, while also becoming increasingly shaped by tourism and extraction.
His research led him to reconsider what it means to preserve culture through architecture by finding ways for cultural preservation and economic vitality to coexist.
“While there, I realized it’s important to preserve culture in places that are developing economically, like Roma Norte and La Condesa,” he said. “There are ways to preserve culture while simultaneously uplifting and upholding economies that are struggling through the architecture that I’m doing.”
That realization is now informing the direction of Barcelo’s capstone. Looking ahead to graduate study, he wants to focus on public space and envision ways that portions of Mexico City could be revitalized and remediated to reflect what they once were.
His ideas include bringing back a lagoon and exploring flotation as a way of responding to the city’s seismic activity.
The project is also informed by Barcelo’s own connection to Mexico. Growing up in Tucson with parents who immigrated from Sonora, he says his experience in Mexico City challenged some of the assumptions he had developed about his own cultural identity and where he belonged.
“I’ve never been in a city and felt like I fit in or can fully express my culture,” he said. “Mexico City was this big eye-opener that I’ve been living my entire life being perceived as different and it doesn’t necessarily have to be like that.”
That personal experience has reinforced his desire to center local communities in his architectural work.
“I don’t want the outside voice to have a say in how Mexican people self-organize and decide what the urban context is,” he said.
Returning to Mexico City also helped Barcelo recognize that his initial ideas about the city were not quite right. Rather than simply confirming his original assumptions, the experience pushed him to refine his thinking and return to Tucson with a clearer vision for his capstone.
“I learned more about what it means to be Mexican at its core, and I feel like being Mexican is living in community and uplifting each other,” he said.
Now in his final year of the B.Arch program, Barcelo says both his residency and his return to Mexico City have given him a stronger foundation for his capstone and a clearer sense of direction heading into his final year.
His research extends beyond the physical site itself. He is also creating a map of Mexico City and conducting site analysis across the 25 quadrants that make up the city. Using GIS, he has stitched the quadrants together and plans to connect photographs to the larger map.
Behind that work is the support of the City Immersion Scholarship and donor Mitch Freedman, whose funding made Barcelo’s travel and research possible.
Barcelo says he is deeply grateful for the opportunity and hopes Freedman will eventually be able to see how the experience shaped his work.
“Had I not had this opportunity, I would’ve had a more clouded idea of what I wanted to do for my capstone,” he said. “Site analysis, traveling, interacting with people and engaging with Mexican culture in this way are all part of a non-linear process that will influence my project.”
