This research explored how the ancient city of Teotihuacan - located near modern-day Mexico City - used architecture and spatial planning to unify an incredibly diverse, immigrant-rich population. With around 25,000 residents at its peak, the city was organized around standardized apartment compounds grouped by ethnicity, occupation, or lineage. These weren’t isolated enclaves, but integrated neighborhoods (barrios) that supported cultural continuity while encouraging civic cohesion.

What stood out to me was how every layer of the built environment—down to the placement of murals and the orientation of temples—reinforced identity, ritual, and a shared sense of purpose.
Key design takeaways:

• Standardized exterior housing disguised highly individualized interiors, signaling equality without erasing cultural nuance.

• Ritual murals (often featuring the “Great Goddess”) adorned both public and private walls, reflecting social class and local mythos.

• Civic infrastructure remains hard to define, but religious sites like the Pyramid of the Sun and Moon clearly aligned with mountains and solar events, anchoring the city spiritually and calendrically.

• City planning was not square, but intentionally angled to match both celestial and terrestrial geography - an early form of environmental and symbolic placemaking.

Even without surviving furniture or textiles, the layout of Teotihuacan tells a story of migration, resilience, and design as a tool for collective belonging. As a designer today, I think there’s a lot to learn from how space was used not just for function, but for meaning.