Guanajuato, Gto., March 7, 2016.- In the Department of Architecture of the Division of Architecture, Art and Design (DAAD) from Campus Guanajuato was made the 2nd Workshop ABG/Atelier Bordeaux-Guanajuato, in which four students from the National School of Architecture and Landscaping of Burdeos (ENSAP-BX), and five from the Architecture degree of the University of Guanajuato. The work topic was: requalification the public space and neighbor participation within the community of "Santuario" in Leon.

These exercise was developed from February 22 to 26, began with a ceremony led by DAAD's Director, M. Juan Martín Aguilera Morales; Dr. René Navarrete, Academic secretary of the same division; M. Jorge Enrique Cabrejos Moreno, Director of the Department of Architecture, as well as university authorities from the student mobility and international liaisons areas.

During the week, the work group made a study of proposals for urban improvement to the community of "Santuario" in Leon, following up the jab began in 2015 for the same zone of study.

After the inauguration, the work began after a visit to the community in which the neighbors shared with the students their perception, problems and expectations, same that were analyzed by the work group. This information and diagnosis in first Atelier, were the base in a series of proposals to socially and spatially act in Galeana street, mobility axis and important identity within the community.

During the week, the work was accompanied by advisors and complemented by conferences given by Horacio Guerrero García, ex-Director of the Institute of Planning of the state of Guanajuato, and Roberto Carlo Álvarez, Director of projects of the Institute of Planning of Leon, who shared with the group the vision of the state, the region and the city of Leon.

After intense work journeys for the four following days, the result of the same was presented to the neighbors, who received the work group on Friday 26th's afternoon, with a collective reunion in the corner of Galeana and Anda of the same community; the students presented the result through eleven slides with proposals, displayed on a wall in the street, also a video made by the students in which they portray the dynamic and the proposal of the work done.

The neighbors offered the students and professors a get-together with ice-cream and snacks prepared by them; the French students prepared crepes that were offered to the neighbors. Music, coexistence and a high expectation of the presented project, were the final framework of the Atelier 2016.

An academic event that at the same time became an extension activity, in which the Architecture degree in collaboration within the Bordeaux school, managed to get the proposals to emerge from the own living experience of the neighbors, and come back to them for their negotiation and possible realization, an interesting exercise in a new way to make urbanism from the very own society, which turns it into the proposal for the Atelier ABG/2016.

The work was conducted by Dr. Carlos Gotlieb, professors of the ENSAP-BX and Dr. Miguel Angel García Gómez of the Department of Architecture. Next May, the group of students of Guanajuato will go to Bordeaux, where they will perform a similar exercise for a metropolitan area in that zone. An exchange that in forthcoming months will increase in the presence of French students, who from August this year, will study in the University of Guanajuato for a year, at the same that a student from Architecture of the University of Guanajuato, will do the same at ENSAP-BX.