MEXICO CITY FOR FOUR DAYS

This building is nicknamed

 "The Washing Machine Building" (or "Lavandería")

December 3 - 7 

Each day I look out from my hotel room on the curious building called by locals ‘the washing machine’ 

Each day the sky is deep blue and as I walk to the office it is only slightly cool, rather like those warmish autumn days in England.

Santa Fe, is the ‘money’ shot of Mexico City, the financial district.

It has tall tower blocks that line the two freeways that snake up from the centre of the city and eventually the traffic from the centre reaches here.

Over the last twenty years tall towers imaginatively designed and as I look down from the 7^th floor office window I see a deep hole, the ground works for ‘The Garden’ that stretches a block each way and will soon be the next edifice to rise up and catch the sun. Workers in red hard hats and yellow hi-vis vests swarm around this site with dumper trucks and bulldozers at their heals like outsized pets.

Santa Fe was developed in the early 1990's on the remnants of an old landfill a rubbish tip that has become a business district.

It is a radically different part of town from the rest of the city, because of its ultramodern architecture and contrasting wealth lifestyle signs. The ninety-minute ride back to the airport confirms this as you re-enter older parts, more run down.

Workers in red hard hats and yellow hi-vis vests swarm around this site with dumper trucks and bulldozers at their heals like outsized pets.