Austin’s Zócalo: Juan Miró’s Collaborative Effort to Expand the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center 

In 1998, the City of Austin invited renowned architect Teodoro González de León (1926-2016) to envision an architectural emblem that celebrates and sustains Mexican American and Latin American culture in Austin: the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC). The commission was sparked after decades of coalition-building from the Austin community, much of which was championed by the center’s namesake, Emma S. Barrientos. In 2007, the institution opened to the public.  

By 2018, the needs of the community had evolved, prompting an expansion plan to increase capacity for programming and to strengthen connectivity to Lady Bird Lake and the Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail. The city selected a collaborative team in 2020: Professor Juan Miró’s studio, Miró Rivera Architects, in partnership with the prominent Mexico City-based firm Tatiana Bilbao Estudio. 

González de León’s original two-story building curves around a central plaza — a zócalo — paying homage to the historical multilayered public gathering spaces ubiquitous in cities, towns and villages across Mexico, and most famously in Mexico City’s central square. A powerful symbol of civic purpose and communal celebration, the MACC’s zócalo becomes even more of a protagonist through the expansion, which improves the plaza’s infrastructure and lengthens the curves of the structure to form a more complete semi-circle around it. Inside, the expansion offers improved facilities with modular, flexible spaces to respond to the needs of both the present and the future. 

“We extended the arms of the building,” says Miró, “finding a way to finish the original crescent but with a different sensibility and materiality. We used light steel columns and white brick with a unique pattern that, like the hand-chiseled precast concrete panels of the original structure, reflect a handmade quality.” 

Recognizing the essential role of water and public greenspace to Austin’s identity, the design team employs a materially light approach that integrates the building with the landscape of the surrounding park. Ten Eyck Landscape Architects selected native and adapted plants found throughout both Mexico and Texas, effectively reducing outdoor potable water consumption by 94.7%.  

The design team conducted over a year of extensive public dialogue to ensure the architecture emulates Latino identity and culture while creating space for connection and creativity both inside and out. Within a changing city and skyline, the renovated Mexican American Cultural Center strengthens representation of the city’s Mexican American and Latino communities while formalizing the relationship between the institution and Austin’s greenspaces. The result reaffirms these communities’ presence as an essential part of Austin’s civic and cultural life.