Havre 69 is located on the south side of Paseo de la Reforma, in Colonia Juarez, one of the most exclusive areas in Mexico City during the early 1900s, peripheral suburbia that over the years has seen various transformations. This privileged residential neighborhood has faced many changing moments: a revolution/war in the early 20th century, two destructive earthquakes (1957 and 1985), and frozen rents for over 50 years. These phenomena have changed the face of this particular area of the city; the empty lots left from the earthquakes, change of land use, and undervalue of the land have been its main problems. Now, the new regulations that allow more density, a better public transportation, and some regeneration programs in Paseo de la Reforma and the city’s downtown have renewed the neighborhood.
The old 19th-century structure we worked on was a building that accommodated four upper-middle-class families more than a hundred years ago. Our project fragmented these houses into 12 housing units plus offices and two commercial front stores: a bakery and a low-cost prefix menu establishment.
The project opens up to the street, brings it in through narrow plazas on the sides, and creates a new relationship between the city, the neighborhood, and the abandoned old houses. Rather than a single intervention, Havre 69 opens to the immediate context, regenerating the neighborhood’s fractured texture.
By AT103 plus Reurbano
Architects: AT103, Francisco Pardo plus Julio Amezcua
Design team: Luis Guízar, Karen Burkart, Alan Orozco, José Luis Fajardo, Stephan Rasinger, Aarón Rivera
Development: Reurbano, Rodrigo Rivero Borrell Wheatley, Alberto Kritzler Ring,
Christian Dávila, Sergio Rojas, Uriel Becker
‘Panadería’ design: Jaime Serra
Images: Rafael Gamo