Location: Mexico
Program: Single Family House
Total site area: 1,938 sq ft / 180 sq m
Total floor area: 3,820 sq ft / 355 sq m
Architectural design: Alvaro Licona
Photography: Santiago Heyser
This unique and contemporary home boasts a striking, eye-catching exterior while maintaining a serene, private sanctuary once inside. The public spaces were designed at street level and create the main façade of the house, which is crowned by a light, white cover that opens to the sky like a screen. This light cover becomes a building envelope that embraces the house and at the same time, creates contrast with the concrete walls. This same building envelope transforms into a half wall that serves as division between the pedestrian access and the parking area. Conceptually, this feature represents a continuous line from roof, to façade, to the front of the property and continues infinitely.
A large retaining wall passes through the entire width of the house on all four levels, including the roof garden, and functions as the backbone of the project. In addition to its structural importance, this feature becomes an architectural aesthetic element as well. In the staircase, the natural light coming in from the skylight showcases the texture of the bare concrete which plays perfectly off the other textural elements- steel, wood and tempered glass.
