Colectivo MX and Reyes Ríos + Larraín Rebuild a Veracruz Plaza Around a 54-Meter Vaulted Corridor

Public plazas in small Mexican cities rarely get the careful architectural attention they deserve. They are often treated as infrastructure problems, solved with generic paving and a few benches. In Cosoleacaque, a municipality of roughly 120,000 in southern Veracruz, Colectivo MX and Reyes Ríos + Larraín Arquitectos took a different approach. Their 2022 redesign of the main plaza, part of the federal SEDATU program for public space interventions, begins not with a blank slate but with a question: how do people already use this place, and what is worth keeping?

The answer shaped everything. About half the existing trees, mature but non-endemic, were preserved for their shade and age. A mid-twentieth-century vaulted stage was stripped of clutter and given a new clay-block screen backdrop. And the project's most assertive gesture, a 54-meter vaulted corridor of herringbone brick set on concrete columns, replaced a set of deteriorating concrete arches that had enclosed the plaza for decades. The result is a 3,000-square-meter space that works harder in Cosoleacaque's subtropical humidity while connecting more honestly to the town's deep cultural roots.

The Vaulted Corridor as Civic Spine

From the air, the series of tiled barrel vaults reads as a long, rhythmic datum line along the plaza's edge. At 54 meters it is not merely a shelter; it is the primary architectural statement, a linear structure that organizes the entire public space. The decision to replace the older concrete arches with this new colonnade was both practical and symbolic. The previous arches had become a virtual enclosure, walling the plaza off from the surrounding streets. The new vaults open outward, defining the boundary without sealing it.

Seen against the low-rise roofscape of Cosoleacaque, the vault structure holds its own without dominating. The tile cladding on the barrel forms gives the roof a warm, earthen tone that sits comfortably alongside the painted concrete and corrugated metal of neighboring buildings. It is a civic gesture calibrated to its context, not a spectacle dropped from above.

Brick, Concrete, and the Logic of Local Materials

Step beneath the corridor and the material palette reveals its intelligence. Concrete columns carry the loads while herringbone-laid artisan bricks form the vault soffits. The combination is neither rustic nostalgia nor slick minimalism. Pigmented and natural concrete provide the structural armature; semi-industrialized and traditional bricks provide the infill and visual texture. Every material was chosen for local availability, durability in Veracruz's heat and humidity, and cost effectiveness within a federally financed budget.

The herringbone pattern is not decorative for its own sake. It is a bonding technique that adds structural integrity to the thin brick shells spanning between the concrete ribs. Under the overcast skies typical of the region's rainy season, the warm brick tones and the crisp concrete edges create a high-contrast visual rhythm that gives the colonnade its character. It is the kind of detailing that rewards proximity.

Shade as Strategy

In a subtropical-humid climate, the single most consequential design move is shade. The architects addressed this on two fronts. Architecturally, the vaulted corridor creates a continuous covered zone for markets, festivals, and daily gatherings. Ecologically, new young trees supplement the preserved mature canopy, extending shade coverage across the open portions of the plaza over time. The planted seating areas visible at the plaza's center are positioned to benefit from both strategies, offering cool spots even during midday.

The paved paths radiating through the central zone are kept narrow enough to maintain planting beds on both sides, which means pedestrians are rarely far from tree cover. Ramps for accessibility were introduced throughout, a basic provision that the previous plaza lacked entirely. These are not footnotes; they signal that the design team understood public space as infrastructure for everyone, not just able-bodied adults.

Preserving the Existing Stage

Not everything was replaced. The mid-twentieth-century vaulted open stage, a fixture of community life in Cosoleacaque, was retained and recalibrated. Unnecessary additions accumulated over decades were stripped away, and a clay-block screen was introduced as a new backdrop. The screen filters light and provides a visually coherent setting for performances and ceremonies, transforming the stage from a leftover relic into an active civic asset.

This selective conservation matters. Too many renovation projects treat everything older than a decade as disposable. Here, the architects made a judgment call: the stage's vaulted form still worked spatially and structurally. What it needed was editing, not erasure. The result is a plaza that carries visible layers of its own history rather than pretending to have appeared fully formed in 2022.

Plans and Drawings

The axonometric drawing clarifies the spatial logic at a glance. The vaulted colonnade runs along one edge, establishing the plaza's primary axis. A fountain and planted areas occupy the central zone, loosely organized along crossing paths. The drawing also reveals how the existing stage platform relates to the new corridor: they are parallel civic elements, one for gathering under cover, the other for performance in the open. The simplicity of the layout is the point. A town plaza used for markets, fiestas, and daily socializing does not need a complex diagram. It needs generous shade, legible circulation, and enough flexibility to host the unpredictable.

Why This Project Matters

Mexico's SEDATU program has produced dozens of public space interventions across the country, with wildly varying quality. Cosoleacaque's plaza stands out because its architects resisted the temptation to overdesign. They studied existing use patterns, kept what worked, introduced durable local materials, and concentrated their budget on a single strong architectural move: the 54-meter vaulted corridor. That discipline is rare in publicly financed projects, where the pressure to look transformative often leads to superficial gestures that age poorly.

The collaboration between Colectivo MX and Reyes Ríos + Larraín also demonstrates what happens when firms with regional knowledge lead the process. The material choices, the shade strategy, and the respect for the existing stage all reflect an intimate understanding of how public life unfolds in a southern Veracruz town. The plaza does not aspire to be an international case study. It aspires to be a good place to sit, shop, talk, and celebrate under a brick vault when the rain comes. That is more than enough.

Cosoleacaque Main Plaza by Colectivo MX and Reyes Ríos + Larraín Arquitectos. Cosoleacaque, Veracruz, Mexico. 3,000 m². Completed 2022. Photography by Andrés Cedillo and Grupo Provimex.

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