Parque Vía
Mexico City’s most prestigious thoroughfare, Paseo de la Reforma, broadens as it climbs westward and incorporates a leafy linear park. In this prime location, ash, eucalyptus, and jacaranda trees shelter the residence from the passing traffic. Within the property itself, the house is surrounded by a lush garden full of flowers that attract insects and small birds, giving a sense of timelessness.
Concrete, stone, porphyry, marble. Encino oak and walnut. Water and vegetation.
The concrete structure is meticulously organized and the house transparent; it is a rhythmical, slender, and clearly defined structure that gives a sense of scale to the different spaces and always remains visible. Wooden shutters soften the openings and windows, and the horizontal, sandblasted marble tile cladding is only distinguishable from the concrete by the stone’s occasional pink streaks. A marble sill beneath each opening or solid section casts a slight shadow, highlighting the rhythm of the façade’s structure.
In the basement, the dark gray stone cladding and the porphyry paved flooring continues down the steps that are crafted out of the same volcanic stone. Below, next to the garage, a path—bordered by low-lying vegetation and climbers, and planted with young trees—leads to steps toward the house’s main entrance. Whichever way you enter the property, the main access is always the focal point, placing a focus on the semi-open, double-height, well-ventilated and cool lobby area.
Each space in the house merges with the outdoors: the entrance lobby with its tree beneath the double-height space and the sculptural, sinuous staircase; the colonnade dipping into a shallow reflecting pool; and the studio beside the gardened area and the jacaranda on the corner. The garden itself emulates this same quality. It overflows from the central courtyard, blending into the terrace’s flower beds demarcated by carved volcanic stone, whose plants entwine with the plants on the reception room’s green roof, and connect to the green canopy of the trees on the leafy avenue.
Inside, each space opens up to a different part of the surrounding garden. The lobby acts as a distributor by connecting to the house’s social space, the open-plan kitchen and utility areas, and finally to the family rooms on the top floor accessed by the staircase. Both the studio and the gym are separate from the interior, and can only be reached by exiting through the terrace, by the tree in the entrance lobby.
The heart of the house is the reception room, where the family can socialize with relatives and friends. This space enjoys natural lighting from all sides, especially through some tall picture windows to the west, which bring in sunlight filtered through the park’s large trees, above the pergola emerging from the reflecting pool. The dining and living room are completely open to the east on one side, and onto the wide terrace on the other.
An open-plan kitchen has pride of place with a central island giving views out onto the garden through large sliding doors that lead to the barbecue area. The kitchen also connects to a breakfast area at one end, and to the utility area behind. In this way, without sacrificing any functionality, the kitchen benefits from plenty of light and a generous sense of space.
Leading up to the second floor, a drop-shaped staircase occupies the entrance lobby and creates an eye-catching contrast to the house’s rigorous design— its curvature emphasized as a blind structure clad with vertical strips of encino oak. During the daytime, natural light enters through the circular “eye” skylight in the pitched roof, and at night, it is bathed in warm indirect lighting from behind the handrail. This self-contained quality creates a pause in the structure’s repetitive rhythm to make the transition to the house’s private area.
On the first floor, a picture window over the double-height lobby gives an openness to the family’s private area and brings in natural lighting. The children’s rooms have narrow steps leading up to a loft space under the roof. The master bedroom is located on the corner, looking straight out onto the jacaranda tree with its purple-blue flowers in spring, and the intense endemic vegetation on the studio’s roof.
