During the COVID19 lockdowns, the world faced restrictions on physical interaction. Public spaces like parks and plazas were closed, making entire neighborhoods hand over areas of communal interaction. Most people sheltered in the digital world, where daily activities were transported to social media platforms in a short time.
This transition centered on the productive adult population, leaving behind collectives who need physical and social interaction to be healthy, like kids or the elderly.
I live at Tlatelolco, an ancient neighborhood in Mexico City that, in the 1950s, faced a complete transformation. Under the ideas of Le Corbusier's utopian Ville Radieuse, the Mexican Government built an Urban Complex of 102 buildings inside 100 HA, where 70% of the area is reserved for common spaces and facilities like schools, hospitals, and an archeological zone.
In this context, social distancing was even more challenging for people, and kids used to live mostly outside, encountering others.
One day, a kid came out of his window and screamed, "I'm bored." This action triggered me to think of ways to finish the distancing and encounter again on the common grounds without compromising collective wellbeing.
I thought about a solution based on a street art tradition in Tlatelolco. Every day, many street musicians play instruments at Tlatelolco's plazas for some hours, people come out of their windows to enjoy and give a small gratification. It is also inspired by the way my grandma took me on long walks to tell the story of our neighborhood, so I could root, love, and care for the place we live.
This type of performance is not intended for kids. Still, I thought to recover the action of storytelling and mix it with the musical tradition to create a space for kids to forget about the pandemics and encounter at the plazas, not physically, but through their windows with imagination and their voices.
During the lockdown, I went out every day to play songs and tell Mexican stories to kids and people of my neighborhood, helped by a portable speaker and a microphone. This action created new interactions between neighbors form all ages who started to come out their windows to imagine, talk, celebrate birthdays, and even read their favorite tales to others.
Project's social media accounts (IG-FB: @narraciones.tlatelolco) were a parallel action to create a horizontal dialogue with the community and keep many narrations available for other kids outside Tlatelolco.

1. The project became an urban ritual and a socialtool: After a year, neighbors suggested where narrations could happen and highlighted events to be still celebrated even in social distance, like b-days & holidays.
2. Architecture as an act of care and invitation to action: Kids started to come down the buildings to reclaim public space and read stories to others.
3. Spaces are built and inhabited with more than the physical body: As architects, we usually work with the tangible nature of spaces, leaving other aspects like social interactions behind. We need to make visible that sometimes what's needed, is to find new ways to inhabit and create spaces in collectivity, like telling stories or singing a happy birthday song at the plaza for someone we love.
4. The city is not just for adults: The project focused on making visible how solutions in our cities barely count how kids and other collectives feel and interact with urban environments.