The project is about a rehabilitation of a house built in 1950's nearby Mexico City. The client asked to recover and adapt the structure of this cold and dark house with openings to the garden. With these premises, we took advantage of the original structure by revealing the underneath layers of materials after years of alterations. These scenarios allowed to release the essence of the structure: 21 cm / 8.26” thick brick walls and concrete slabs.
To develop this intervention, 3 strategies where applied. The first one was to make the house adapts to the site's and bioclimatic conditions: it was opened to breezes, slab slopes where modified to rainwater collection, and openings between the slabs for daylight entrance for thermal mass working.
The second one, consist in the use of three main materials to create a dialogue between the existing elements and the new ones: double walls made of brick in its original 21cm masonry unified with brick powder from the demolished walls. COR-TEN Steel was used in the additions, canopies and a new wall, which accompanies the visitor from the entrance to the main hall. Carpentry and wooden elements where recovered from demolitions, and also timber beams from a demolished restaurant nearby and used for shading the terraçe and other additions.
For the third strategy, the old house was adapted to receive the new program, which includes: a GYM, 3 bathrooms, dressing room, a pool, and service areas. Pipelines and services where modified with new technology featuring solar panels for water heating, variable velocity devices for pumping water, radiant floors for heating and solar PV panels.
The result of these strategies is shown as a group of brick volumes resting in the garden as rocks, receiving the silhouettes of the trees. The spaces between these volumes are transparent, allowing different views of the garden, which gives sensations of serenity within the chaos of Mexico City.
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