Torre Pedregal

This 600-apartment tower was designed for a very narrow site in the upscale residential district of El Pedregal: this rocky terrain is home to numerous magnificent projects of modern Mexican architecture. The city’s growth and verticalization called for a reflection on the architectural values required for a project on this site.

In its golden era, this area enjoyed extensive gardens and works of modern architecture set among its rocks. This idea was the inspiration for the architectural concept, introducing the magnificent gardens inside the tower and emphasizing these characteristic local features in the memory of its inhabitants. To achieve this, we conceived a tower that is massive yet slender, solid but transparent. The surrounding perimeter garden penetrates the tower to fill its central patio, turning it into an immense hanging garden.

The ratio of the project’s proportions lends it dynamism, endowing it with very different perceptions depending on the observer’s viewpoint: on the short sides, the building appears like a slender tower, and on the long sides, the tower becomes massive, like a vast curtain.

The carefully ordered exterior contrasts with the organic and unstructured character of the plant-filled interiors of the volumes. The freely growing natural elements enrich the geometric rhythm. A contrasting composition emerges that highlights the qualities of each of the two orders and a chromatic relationship in which green appears as an essential hue.

 

Pedregal, Mexico City, 2015

51,000 sqm

Infonavit Mejorando La Unidad, El Chopo

For Infonavit’s “Improving Housing Complexes” program we studied a housing complex in the El Chopo district. This project is based on the idea of respecting and conserving existing elements that have naturally found an adequate functional state, producing a respectful intervention in the housing complex and for the community as a whole.

The project is defined by specific but continuous interventions; the plazas and the connections between them are the spaces that have the greatest potential for sporting, social, and recreational activities that strengthen the bonds between local residents.

To this end, an open community pavilion was designed to offer a variety of activities for local inhabitants; the central park area was redesigned to reactivate the children’s playground and at the same time provide a meeting place for those looking after them. In front of the children’s park, a small contemplative space with benches and lights was created in the planted area. The project is complemented by a concrete skate park.

 

San Juan Xalpa, Mexico City, 2015

2,240 sqm

Rancho El Salto

A rectangular floor plan of 11 x 65 meters was subdivided into 16 equal-sized modules to accommodate the program, employing a single, standardized construction system. Linking these modules produces the public program and dividing them forms the adjacent service spaces. A perimeter circulation allows internal and external access to each of the program’s spaces. The (almost completely blind) northern façade is designed in response to the intense climate and constant northerly winds, while the south façade is an arcade offering views over the coffee plantations and the San Pablo Coapan valley, and permitting adequate insolation of the volume. A series of interior patios provide natural lighting and ventilation for the different spaces.

The project uses a minimum palette of local materials (polished stucco, clay floor and roof tiles, timber and ironwork), which together with its shape respond directly to the surroundings and the extreme local climate.

 

Naolinco, Veracruz, 2015

720 sqm

Photographs: Ignacio Urquiza