In the sixties, Hollywood founded the city of Puerto Vallarta when John Huston shot The Night of the Iguana 'somewhere in the mexican coast by the Pacific Ocean'. The plot –first written as a short story, then adapted for the stage, and finally for the screen, all by Tennessee Williams– tells the adventures Rev. Lawrence Shannon experiences as a touristic guide in Puerto Vallarta working for a thrid-class travel agency after being expelled from the Order for characterizing the Occidental image of God as a "senile delinquent" in one of his sermons. While shooting the film, Richard Burton (the actor playing Shannon) developed a romance with his then lover Elizabeth Taylor, and married her in the seaside town. The media followed, and Puerto Vallarta was born. In 1970, mexican and american presidents Gustavo Diaz Ordaz and Richard Nixon hosted the opening of Puerto Vallarta's international airport. More recently, every spring break, international youngsters revisit Rev. Shannon's investigation by the cliff-like hotels that rise facing the Pacific ocean.

Analogously, in the first decade of the twentieth century, before the Vallarta phenomenon, Porfirio Diaz founded the lakeside town of Chapala when he chose as his salon d'été a modest fishermen's village in the mexican occident. Like the springbreakers, Don Porfirio visited the state of Jalisco yearly, on easter. Rich Guadalajara families followed the way, founded the Chapala Yacht Club, and built a road from the city to the lakeside town. In 1910 the Mexican Revolution broke out and Diaz exiled himself in Paris, where he would later die and be buried; like Oscar Wilde did.
The Occidental Garden is a small open space for throwing parties for 200 guests; it is located between a mountain range and Mexico's biggest lake, Chapala; it's right next to it. The commission demanded minor infrastructural implementations for the events –services for the guests, an area to install a temporary kitchen, a handrail by the site's open-ended boundary overlooking the lake– and a landscape/gardening intervention, which had to meet only two conditions: the view from the terrace to the lake should remain unobstructed, and enough space to install a tent –right by the lake– had to be left clear. Then the vegetation was disposed according to two scales: the public, spread through the site's bounding limits, and the private, a new, intimate space at the center of the garden delimited by flowery bushes.  
Jardin de Occidente
Published:

Jardin de Occidente

The Occidental Garden is a small open space for throwing parties for 200 guests. It is located next to Mexico's biggest lake, Chapala, and it has Read More

Published:

Creative Fields