Guest Lecture by Linda Manzanilla
Aerial view of Atetelco apartment compound. Source: Kathleen Berrin and Esther Pastorzy. Teotihuacan. Art from the City of Gods. Thames and Hudson, 1993.
The Multifamily Apartment Compounds and the Neighbourhood Centers of Teotihuacan
The city of Teotihuacan in central Mexico was an exception in Mesoamerica: a huge metropolis of 20 km2 with an urban grid, surrounded by villages devoted to the production and access to subsistence elements; a city housing a multiethnic population; a society with a strong corporate vocation, and the head of a first-generation state based in a multiethnic pact.
One of the elements inaugurated in Teotihuacan, and new in Mesoamerica, is the fact that most of the population lives in multifamily apartment compounds, which house corporate groups devoted to a particular productive activity. Different apartment compounds surround neighbourhood centres, which coordinate and articulate the population of the city. And, finally, various neighbourhoods are located in each of the four districts of the city.
In this talk I will define the elements of apartment compounds and neighbourhood centres, through my interdisciplinary projects in Oztoyahualco 15B:N6W3 and Teopancazco S2E2, in opposite sectors of the city.