“Resonancia Suspendida” (Suspended Resonance) is an ephemeral timber pavilion in Mexico City by Pablo Pérez Palacios in collaboration with Reed Wood and Arboreal. A single 24-meter laminated beam is carried by a field of rotating vertical panels that toggle between solid support and permeability, producing a didactic reading of structure while cultivating a light, open ground plane. The installation tests wood’s contemporary agency as both an efficient structure and a sensorial medium within a compact 120 m² footprint.
Resonancia Suspendida Technical Information
- Architects: PPAA
- Location: Mexico City, Mexico
- Gross Area: 120 m2 | 1,292 Sq. Ft.
- Project Year: 2025
- Photographs: © Luis Garvan
We pursued a single structural gesture that could be read and experienced. By rotating the supporting planes, the pavilion moves between bearing and passage, turning structure into space and space into structure.
– Pablo Pérez Palacios
Concept and Material Agenda
The pavilion frames wood as a contemporary medium by isolating its attributes into a legible diagram. The 24-meter beam asserts timber’s capacity for span and bending efficiency, while the rotating panels expose its tactile and visual qualities at the scale of the body. The installation operates performatively: minimal movement transforms the reading of the whole, inviting occupants to test how a structural system affects perception, circulation, and threshold.
A reduced kit of parts sustains clarity. One horizontal element and a family of vertical planes organize both form and experience without ancillary substructures or applied cladding. This reduction highlights timber’s structural economy alongside its capacity for surface and light modulation. The project also positions renewably sourced, laminated wood within current debates on low-carbon construction, linking technical intent to sensory impact rather than treating sustainability as an external narrative.
Structural Strategy: A Floating Line and Rotational Supports
The beam reads as an uninterrupted line, 1.2 meters deep, hovering across the site. Its apparent levitation depends on a distributed set of vertical timber panels that rotate on their axes. When aligned perpendicular to the beam, panels act as direct bearing elements. When rotated, their thickness collapses visually, dematerializing the support and shifting attention back to the hovering span. The sequence choreographs the legibility of the load path, making the structure not only present but teachable.
At this scale, a 24-meter glulam member raises questions of deflection, shear capacity, and torsional stability. The project’s didactic value lies in how these forces are negotiated in public view. The rotational panels likely couple vertical support with in-plane bracing when closed, then trade stiffness for permeability when opened. The logic underlines a structural spectrum rather than a binary state, revealing how modest geometric adjustments recalibrate stiffness, continuity, and perceived mass.
Spatial Configuration and Transformative Porosity
The rotating planes transform the pavilion from an enclosure to a passage with minimal physical effort. In the closed state, they define edges and compress movement beneath the beam, producing measured thresholds and framed sightlines. Once opened, the field becomes porous, cross-views lengthen, and circulation dilates across the 120 m2 ground plane. The device treats the boundary as a variable, not a given, and makes that variability legible to visitors.
The space works through a dialogue of static and dynamic components. The beam stabilizes the composition and calibrates the scale, while the panels script real-time adjustment of permeability and crowd flow. This interplay yields an almost weightless interior, where the mutable porosity of its supports counters the gravitational presence of the span. Light grazes the timber surfaces differently across panel positions, thickening or thinning the experience without adding elements.
Urban Context and Installation Logic
Within the festival setting, the pavilion appears clearly at the urban scale as a single line in suspension; yet, it invites bodily engagement at close range through the tactility of timber and the operable panels. Concentrating structure overhead releases the ground plane, allowing diverse trajectories and densities to pass through, linger, or reorient as the panels pivot. The installation performs as both a marker in the city and a negotiable piece of the public realm.
The minimal kit suggests efficient assembly and disassembly, consistent with the temporality of an urban installation. Rotational hardware localizes complexity at hinge points, while repetitive panels facilitate quick sequencing on-site. This reversibility aligns with material stewardship, keeping components legible and reusable. By coupling a long-span timber element with adaptable lateral boundaries, the project embeds flexibility in both construction logistics and spatial use, foregrounding timber’s structural efficiency while measuring its environmental claims against actual operations in the city’s climate and social rhythms.
About PPAA
PPAA (Pérez Palacios Arquitectos Asociados) is an architecture studio based in Mexico City, founded in 2015 by Pablo Pérez Palacios. Known for a rational and poetic approach to space, the firm explores architecture as a consequence of context, human interaction, and material clarity. Their work fluidly integrates structure, atmosphere, and sustainability, emphasizing reduction, performative subjectivity, and formal restraint across scales.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Architects: PPAA – Pablo Pérez Palacios, Miguel Vargas, Eduardo Colón
- Other contributors: Reed Wood and Arboreal (collaborators)
- Photography: Luis Garvan and Estudio Cobalto
