Fundidora Memorial
Year
Location
Status
Co-authors
Area
2019
Monterrey, NL, Mexico
Competition
Adrián Flores, Carolina Segura, David de la Garza
200 m2
The steel factory Fundidora de Acero Monterrey was a key agent in the development and growth of the city of Monterrey. Its bankruptcy and closing in 1986 is clouded with ambiguity, with some blaming its unionized workers for it. The idea for a memorial was brought forward by a group of elderly ex-workers in order to commemorate a tragic accident that is largely unknown by the general population. The morning of November 20th, 1971, an accident in one of the furnaces took place in which the casting pot clashed against a structure dropping 25 tonnes of molten steel and killing 17 workers.
After the bankruptcy the factory grounds were taken by the state government and turned into a public park. The park, the largest and most important in the city, is home to new structures rising alongside some of the factory’s original buildings and furnaces kept intact and incorporated into the park landscape. From the site of the accident all that remains are three of the four chimneys the furnace once had. Many of the original plans of the structure remain in the park archives, together with some plans of the accident drawn by industry authorities and insurance agents. By combining these with the location of the remaining chimneys, we were able to locate the site of the accident and the place where the workers that died were at the moment of their death.
The proposed memorial is thought of as an open wound in the landscape, representing the wound in the factory’s history . Since the memorial is below-grade level it uses the nearby chimneys, witnesses to that fateful accident, as a means of locating the memorial in the landscape, appropriating them into the memorial.
The deepest part of the ditch is the epicentre of the accident, the place where the casting pot clashed with the structure, which is then stretched towards the point where the sun rises on November 20; the accident happened around that time. The walls of the ditch are lined with bare metal plates that together with the hot weather characteristic of the city make for a very uncomfortable inner atmosphere that is reminiscent of the feeling of being inside a working furnace. Plates with the names of the deceased workers are placed in relationship with their proximity to the site of the accident.