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