The venue for the Tijuana Innovadora conference is the Centro Cultural Tijuana, known simply as Cecut. The complex is the most important cultural facility in northwest Mexico and is the heart of Tijuana's arts and cultural life.
The center is located on 8.5 acres in the city's modern business district, just five minutes from the San Ysidro border crossing.
The federally operated center, which opened in October of 1982, was designed by prominent Mexican architects Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Manuel Rosen. The complex includes a Museum of the Californias, performance spaces, meeting rooms and an IMAX theater housed in a giant ball-shaped building -- known as "La Bola" (The Ball) -- which has become a city landmark.
The center added 50,000 square feet of space when El Cubo (The Cube) opened in September 2008 to house major exhibitions. A cafeteria and bookstore round out the facility, which hosts around 15,000 events a year.
The Centro Cultural is the home of the Baja California Orchestra and the Spanish American Guitar Center. Since 2005, it's also home to Entijuanarte, an outdoor festival that presents each September more than 100 visual artists from the border region and beyond, as well as concerts and video presentations.
In October of 2010, the center hosted the first Tijuana Innovadora conference. The 2012 conference coincides with the center's 30th anniversary, being celebrated with a variety of artistic and cultural events that draw visitors from both sides of the border.
