The house combines classic elements of Northwest architecture with contemporary abstract elements. The floor plan is born from squares even though the section is more dynamic with steps and platforms, while with the facade all heritage and conservation constraints are resolved. The upper terrace allows a 360-degree view of the hills and mountains.
Ederlezi House by Práctica Arquitectura. Photograph by César Béjar.
Project description by Práctica Arquitectura
Three hundred and sixty degrees of views of hills, mountains, and hills connect the user with the horizon from the terrace at the top of the house. The interior is different, the robust reddish atmospheres, patios, and landscaped spaces invite a calm, more intimate, and disconnected life.
Ederlezi is the name of the celebration that marks the beginning of spring in the Balkans and Turkey. A break from the gray winter that manifests itself with music, dances, and flowers. The contrasts between the green of the vegetation with the red tones of the paste of the walls, the tezontle of the gardens, and the gates seek to perpetuate the warmth and movement of that time of the year and emulate memories of desert and Mediterranean landscapes present in the conversations with the clients during the design process. From the particularity of its volumetry and the mysteries and surprises that define its paths, the personality of the house is built deeply similar but different from its context, combining classic elements of northwestern architecture such as the plinth and the proportion of the openings with more abstract contemporary elements.
Ederlezi House by Práctica Arquitectura. Photograph by Apertura Arquitectónica.
Standing on a narrow lot five meters wide and twenty meters deep in the historic center of San Pedro Garza in the metropolitan area of Monterrey, the house is organized through a backbone of circulation and services along the adjacent area and a central courtyard that divides the program into two volumes. The first volume facing the street contains the entrance hall, the garage, the double-height guest room with a loft, and a rooftop terrace. The second at the rear contains the living room, dining room, kitchen, a blue patio that finishes off the end of the lot, and the master bedroom that has access to a landscaped terrace. Although the floor plan is based on a rational sequence of squares, the section is more dynamic with steps, platforms, overlaps in the window frames, and fretwork that finish with the red ziggurat that forms a containment towards the street and resolves with its facade the current restrictions in terms of heritage and conservation.
Faced with the challenges and opportunities of housing in heritage zones in growing cities, the Ederlezi house reconciles notions such as the fluidity of an ethereal and open space with the privacy that separates the life of the streets and neighbors from what happens inside. The project seeks to blur the routine through the diversity of experiences it offers and at the same time rethink the cadastral condition of the long and narrow plots in this area as a fertile typology to explore with volumes that are perforated, carved, and excavated in a stereotomic dialogue between the user's personality, the house, and the mountain.
