Location: Tepoztlán, Mexico
Site area: 3,800 m2 (40,902 sqft)
Architects: EDAA (design, architectural development, construction)
Design team: Luis Arturo García, Jahir Villanueva, Juan Hernández, Hans Álvarez, Enrique Villalón, Antonio Rivas, Ana Rodríguez
Consultants: PBS Ingenieros, MS (structural engineering), MS (soil mechanics), Bimsa Reports (cost engineering), Descarga Cero (water management).
Photography: KUU Studio | Official Yoshihiro Koitani’s Photography
Casa Meztitla is an intervention of a natural scenario. It showcases the luxurious value of leisure, the tropical weather, the intense sunlight, the smells of nature, the over 500 year-old landscaped terraces and the ever-present rock mountain: El Tepozteco. It is context in itself. The house, built out of rough stone, crawls low under the trees, aligned with the vegetated-covered stone slopes. It is the creation of pure space within the natural space (Paz, O., 1987). It has an introverted living yet is continually open to its surroundings. Only two elements reveal its existence to the outside world: the colorful bougainvillea flowers showing randomly through the trees’ dense foliage, which mark the plot’s perimeter; and the massive and monolithic white box that emerges through the treetops.
The house´s theme is not about the program but the never ending relationship between indoors and outdoors: there is no way one can go from an area to another without walking through outdoor spaces; every area (except for services) is open to the exterior in a way that one can actually be out of the house by crossing any doors. The house works likes a series of rooms connected through diverse types of outdoor areas. At the end, the mild subtropical weather was used as an excuse for not building a house that closes to itself, but that continuously opens to the natural environment and hopefully, it will bond the house, its living and nature in a symbiotic relation.
EDAA
All images courtesy of EDAA | © KUU Studio | Official Yoshihiro Koitani’s Photography
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EDAA
EDAA, or Estrategias para el Desarrollo de Arquitectura (Strategies for the Development of Architecture), is a Mexico City based architecture office whose practice is focused on the production of contemporary architecture through diverse disciplines: architectural and graphic design, illustration, construction, commercial strategies and financial design.
It was founded as an independent practice by Luis Arturo García after several years of working in different architecture, landscape and urban design practices in Mexico and Canada. more
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