Architecture Wednesday: House With Four Courtyards

In Mexico, many of the homes revolve around a central courtyard, and this modern home in the old town of Tacubaya house aims to reinterpret that use in a contemporary manner.

It all started with a vacant lot … and now there’s a perimeter wall — designed to mimic older homes in the neighborhood — nearly twenty feet high to contain the space. This wall becomes a discreet facade along the street that respects the height of the neighboring properties and the harmony of the street.

On the ground, the house reads like a chessboard, alternating solid volumes and courtyards; but as the house is made almost entirely of glass, the space is conceived as one, inside and outside. The metal structure of the home creates a three-dimensional grid that defines the spaces, but is thin enough to seem almost insignificant.

The house has two floors, with public spaces — parking, entrance, laundry, kitchen dining room and study — on the first floor, and three bedrooms, each with its own dressing room and bathroom, on the second floor. Only the living room takes both floors, with its double height ceilings, connecting the two floors, the stairs and the courtyards.

And each courtyard is also a garden in its own right, giving the impression of living in contact with the outside; and, thanks to the courtyards, the house is awash in sunlight all day.

But the gardens don’t stop in the courtyard; the roof is its own garden, with a glass cube protruding amid the plants; it regulates the temperature of the house and is the ideal place to sit in the hammock and read, watch the vegetation and the roofs of the old town of Tacubaya.

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