As a visual finish to the houses, a succulent garden serves as a space for contemplation and silence. This garden includes a sculpture by the Tezontle studio that refers to the great pieces by Edward James in the Huasteca jungle. The volumes of the house are simple, based on the principle of golden proportions.
Description of project by HEMAA
Agua Pedregal 210 offers a series of temporal journeys in time. If, on a palimpsest, new writing welcomes the traces of the old sentences once written on the page, the three houses that comprise this project respect the original footprint of a house built in the 1950s, the structure once stood as part of the modernist movement that took shape in the Jardínes del Pedregal neighborhood.
Some of the original materials are preserved here and there, as fleeting windows into the past. At the same time, the solid character of rocky exterior walls and the houses’ terraced structures echo the long history of a site formed out of volcanic eruptions, a site that was worshiped by both the ancient and modern cultures of the Mexican Valley.
Modernist architect José Villagrán once said that El Pedregal confirmed that “it was possible to build gardens among the rocks”. Fascination with El Pedregal was not new. In his 1923 catalog on vernacular plants in the region, botanist Maximino Martínez already described El Pedregal as an ideal site for naturalist exploration.
Over the next decades, the place’s crooked hikes through capricious magma formations captivated the likes of architect Luis Barragán, photographer Armando Salas Portugal, painter Doctor Atl, and poet Carlos Pellicer, all of them key figures of modern art in mid-century Mexico.
By the 1940s, Barragán was already picturing the incipient Jardínes del Pedregal neighborhood as a place where architecture would face the momentous task of assimilating itself with a landscape dominated by a volcanic rock that, over the years, had attracted a series of endemic species such as the Palo Loco or the Cacomixtle.
Lost among mysterious rock formations, the neighborhood would simultaneously be in and outside the city. In dialogue with this fascinating tradition and with Barragán’s vision for El Pedregal, the project proposes establishing a continuous and eternally present dialogue with its natural context and territory.
Careful landscaping work is thus a fundamental part of architecture here. A small and secluded succulent garden in dialogue with a red concrete piece commissioned to Tezontle Studio named “cascabel” (as a reference to a rattlesnake´s tail) offer a space of contemplation in the rocks akin to the spiritual experience that Mexican modernists found in their magma hikes.
Every space in each of the houses finds a way of communicating with the outside, be it through windows, patios, benches, terraces, or balconies. House and garden will mature as contemporaries in an ever-present, intimate, interaction.
In the interior, conditions are in place so that family life can comfortably develop and mold its own environment. Carefully crafted wood in living rooms, closets, and terraces balances the cold force of concrete and rock with a warm, elegant quality.
Spaces on the inside are ample without being excessive, similarly offering a warm environment for its residents. The tried and tested golden ratio applied throughout the openings and the tiling of the façade derive in organized sequences that amplify space in a consistent manner. This translates into a flowing, uninterrupted, rhythm through the houses’ interiors.
Moving effortlessly, almost without noticing it, between house and garden, interior and exterior, terrace and room, results in a pleasing experience. But, above all, the architecture of Agua 210 offers the possibility of habitation, heralding the promise of a homely future.
Conceived in the 1950s by architect Luis Barragán during long hikes among the volcanic magma of the Xitle that hosted a variety of endemic plants and animals, few places offer an environment as rich for modern architecture as the Jardínes del Pedregal.
Built on a 3000 square meters plot where a modern house once stood, the project absorbs the characteristic elements of a site that captivated Barragán, as well as the likes of painter Doctor Atl, photographer Armando Salas Portugal, poet Carlos Pellicer, and so many other artists and intellectuals of the Mexican modern movement.
Volumetrically, the proposal is organized around two axes. On the one hand, the footprint of the original house (1955). On the other hand, the precepts first established by Luis Barragán for the development of Jardínes del Pedregal where he envisioned a place where architecture and landscape would communicate with each other. Therefore, all three houses are sheltered within a mature garden.
As a visual complement for the houses, a succulent garden appears as a space for contemplation and silence. This garden includes a sculpture by Tezontle Studio that echoes the great pieces of Edward James in the Huastecan rainforest, another modern artist that attempted to establish a profound dialogue between human and vegetal architecture.
Volumes in the house are simple, sustained by the principle of the golden ratio. Columns and windows are in charge of generating rhythm and sequence, at the same time that they offer a perfect amount of natural illumination and garden views. If public spaces in the house point toward the common garden, intimate spaces turn to the private gardens behind each house.
A staircase surrounded by plants guides the houses’ access and accentuates the material presence of the door. The central hall offers a circulating point inside the house. On the first floor, each house holds a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, and a family room.
Upstairs, you can find a more intimate family room, as well as three private spaces. The third floor is reserved for a terrace contemplating the vast natural views within an intimate and private space. Materials selected for the facades geometrically frame the different levels and volumes.
Order is created by these means through blocks that delineate spaces between walls and columns, at the very same time that they accentuate the horizontality of the project and generate platforms of different depths. The elegant, hand-crafted work of stonemasonry on the facades assembled through golden ratio proportions give an identity of its own.
By employing local materials, this echoes once again the modernist movement in Jardínes del Pedregal. Balancing the solid foundations of strone, metal and concrete, the use of oak in the interior spaces offers a warm quality, as does the subtle illumination that grants primacy to the open natural spaces of the immediate landscape.
