At the invitation of the Municipal President of Cosoleacaque, we carried out the preliminary design of a Textile Museum intended to preserve the traditional knowledge and techniques of local artisans while reactivating the region’s natural cotton industry.

Participatory workshops with local weavers led to the development of our proposal for a “living museum”, which would showcase the entire production process, from the cultivation of traditional varieties of cotton and natural dyes, to processing the raw material, spinning and dying thread, and designing and weaving the cloth on traditional backstrap looms.

The museum is therefore designed as a series of open workshop spaces in which each of these activities is highlighted, with local weavers carrying out their daily work before the public eye. The “heart” of the museum is a large traditional palapa open to a grand garden anchored by an ancient chicozapotetree. The design preserves this existing tree, in whose shade the weavers traditionally work and whose hardwood they prize for making their tools, at the center of the museum and of the activities that give it life.