Sfumato Pavilion is a temporary intervention within a dormant 6 x 6 x 6 meter steel frame at ITESO in Tlaquepaque, Mexico. Designed by Fernando Hernandez, Humberto Espinoza, and Jessica Corona, the pavilion uses mirror acrylic, black shade mesh, gravel, and timber to turn an overlooked campus structure into an optical and contemplative room.

Sfumato Pavilion Technical Information

• ArchitectsFernando Hernandez, Humberto Espinoza, Jessica Corona
• LocationCampus ITESO, Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, Mexico
• Gross Area36 m² | 388 Sq. Ft.
• Project Year2026
• Photographs© FARO72 and Jessica Corona

The proposal does not incorporate a new object; it alters the way the existing one is perceived. Absence becomes a form of presence.

– Fernando Hernandez, Humberto Espinoza, and Jessica Corona

Reawakening an Existing Campus Framework

Sfumato occupies CUBO MEM, a red-painted PTR steel skeleton erected at ITESO in the late twentieth century to support temporary student installations. The 6-meter cube had gradually become part of the visual background of the architecture and design precinct, its intended role as an adaptable framework eclipsed by changes in academic routines and campus use. Rather than treating this condition as a problem to be solved through replacement, the project makes the pre-existing frame both its structural support and conceptual subject.

The intervention is therefore less an autonomous pavilion than a calibrated alteration of a familiar object. Its new envelope temporarily suppresses the legibility of the red frame from most exterior views, while retaining the original structure as the support for both cladding and interior lining. This reversal is significant: a skeletal object designed to host additions is made visually dense, only to reveal an unexpected emptiness within.

From the adjacent arcades and circulation routes, the pavilion can initially register as a mass of foliage rather than a constructed object. Its apparent disappearance within the campus vegetation renews the former cube’s visibility by withholding its recognizable outline. Perception becomes the installation’s primary medium, asking visitors to distinguish between the reflected campus and the volume that receives it.

Reflection, Distortion, and the Dissolving Envelope

Three faces of the cube are clad in mirror acrylic panels fixed to galvanized-profile frames. The panel layout establishes a measured grid across each elevation, making fabrication logic visible rather than concealing it within a seamless skin. Yet the surface does not produce the stable, exact image associated with glass mirror. Slight flexing in the acrylic introduces small changes in plane, breaking reflected trees, paths, concrete buildings, and red steel stairways into uneven fragments.

This material behavior gives the project its name. Rather than sharply reproducing the campus, the cladding softens and disperses it into a blurred field of color and movement. In Guadalajara’s rainy-season light, saturated vegetation can visually overtake the cube, while overcast conditions allow upper panels to merge with the pale sky. The enclosure acts as a lens, making the surrounding architecture present but difficult to read in its usual terms.

The cladding stops above a bed of dark river stones, leaving a continuous shadow joint around the base. This narrow reveal prevents the mirrored faces from appearing to rest directly on the ground and gives the volume a lightly suspended reading. A terracotta-red curb contains the stone field and recalls the campus palette, while the dark aggregate absorbs light beneath the reflective envelope. The contrast between a dematerialized upper surface and a heavy granular ground plane anchors the pavilion without making it visually static.

A Dark Interior Framing the Sky

A partially open fourth facade marks the threshold to a compact interior chamber. Here the project exchanges reflection for absorption. Black shade mesh is tensioned directly to the original steel cube, with visible lacing and cord connections recording the temporary assembly. The mesh darkens the enclosure without making it entirely opaque, allowing the structural frame to remain faintly perceptible behind a porous lining.

Once inside, the surrounding campus is largely excluded from view. The contrast with the reflective exterior is deliberate: where the outer faces multiply the context, the interior reduces it. The open roof becomes the dominant visual aperture, and the sky is framed as a shifting surface of light. The dark mesh heightens this effect by making the ceiling opening the brightest and most spatially expansive element in the room.

Material choices remain deliberately spare. Fine dark gravel produces an uneven, acoustically subdued floor, while a single heavy timber bench occupies the center as both furniture and measure of inhabitation. Its rough-sawn mass contrasts with the mesh’s thinness and the acrylic exterior’s optical instability. Sitting on the bench turns the room into an instrument for slow observation, in which the vertical field of sky replaces the horizontal distractions of the campus courtyard.

Temporary Architecture as Campus Lens

The pavilion’s reflective skin continuously records the ITESO campus’s environmental conditions. Dense tree canopies, humid light, concrete arcades, red stairs, railings, and paved circulation routes are folded across the acrylic panels at different scales. In several views, the existing campus appears as distorted red-and-gray banding across the facade, making the temporary structure a surface through which the architecture school can examine its own material vocabulary.

This optical relationship is not neutral. The gridded panels fragment familiar elements such as stair towers and inscriptions, interrupting the institutional coherence of the surrounding buildings. The project neither competes with the red steel framework nor simply restores its original visibility. Instead, it stages a dialogue between the inherited structure, the physical campus, and a temporary skin that is dependent on weather, viewpoint, and movement.

Its limited duration gives the intervention a particular usefulness within a shared academic environment. A small enclosure can redirect pedestrian attention toward an underused courtyard and create a setting for pause, informal encounter, and discussion without demanding permanent alteration to the campus. By using a modest material palette and the latent capacity of an existing frame, Sfumato also demonstrates how temporary architecture can test spatial possibilities before they become fixed as long-term construction.

© FARO72 & Jessica Corona© FARO72 & Jessica Corona© FARO72 & Jessica Corona© FARO72 & Jessica Corona© FARO72 & Jessica Corona© FARO72 & Jessica Corona© FARO72 & Jessica Corona© FARO72 & Jessica Corona© FARO72 & Jessica Corona© FARO72 & Jessica Corona© FARO72 & Jessica Corona© FARO72 & Jessica Corona© FARO72 & Jessica CoronaAbout Fernando Hernandez, Humberto Espinoza, and Jessica Corona

Fernando Hernandez and Humberto Espinoza, both students, and graduate Jessica Corona developed the winning proposal for the MEM.01 competition at ITESO in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, Mexico. Their approach reinterprets the existing CUBO MEM steel frame through a temporary installation of mirror acrylic, black shade mesh, gravel, and timber.

Credits and Additional Notes

1. Competition organizers: Taller de Diseño professors Francisco Esqueda and Esteban Cervantes
2. Jury: Mara Partida of Mendoza Partida Arch Studio, Andres Arias of ZHA Architects, and Gilles Delalex of Studio Muoto
3. Construction support: Acesta, Arquitonica, Global Aceros, eEC arquitectos, em-estudio, Estevez, and Pert Proyectos y Construccion
4. OText: Arq. Guadalupe Castillo Aja, September 2026
5. Photography: FARO72 and Jessica Corona