Architecture: Raul Peña A. Architects
Location: Mexico City
Area: 62 sqm
Year: 2014
Photographs: Alberto Moreno Guzman, Raul Peña Arias
Structural Engineer: Vicente Robles Jara
A studio and a roof terrace in an adjoining house to the Frida Kahlo's Garden ends facing Venustiano Carranza Street in La Conchita patrimonial wooded square.
The program consists of a space divided by a base cabinet with different uses: an office, a living room and the other half as a TV room and guest bedroom. The folding bed is hidden in one side of the wall divisor of the bathroom that serves this transformable space.
The terrace surface is a hardwood deck for outdoor with some existing skylights of the original house. The height facing the park has been protected by a steel and light cable railing painted in black.
The studio has 62 sqm and 180 sqm the wooden terrace.
The steel structure has been painted in matt black. The roof is a metal insulated system supported by I beams with a white plaster ceiling lined with the surrounding glazed skylights that make the appearance of different separated planes accentuating the Cartesian rigor of the work.
The house has a courtyard that in the 80´s decade was covered by with glass skylights and a metal stair with a white huge tubular railing. It is noteworthy that the house on the outside slavishly respects the type imposed regulations in the area. The studio makes a difference in both language and time showing itself free and lighter. The black color of the structure emphasizes simplicity and passes unnoticed abroad.
The windows open onto the terrace with a system of sliding floor to ceiling glass doors, opening the half of the façade.
Plant pots with flowers have been set beside the existing house skylights to protect them from eventual stumbles.
Accurate lighting accents set on the terrace convert the studio in a light box at night.
