Casa Xoltic
CASA XOLTIC begins with a conviction: in a city where real estate pressure is often resolved through demolition and replacement, recovering an existing house is also an urban stance.
Located in the Del Carmen neighborhood, in the heart of Coyoacán, the original dwelling — built in the 1940s — retained a solid structure and clear domestic proportions, although it had undergone successive interventions over time that fragmented its spatial logic. Rather than replacing it, the project proposes to extend its lifespan through a deep reconfiguration that updates its structural, spatial, and technical performance in accordance with current standards, without erasing its character.
On the ground floor, one of the principal gestures was to reconfigure the entrance in order to restore privacy and reestablish a transitional threshold between street and interior.
A custom millwork system was designed that integrates storage while functioning as a vestibular device: a continuous built-in element organizes arrival, filters direct views, and establishes a clear threshold before entering the social areas. This piece articulates the living room, dining area, and circulation, providing order and containment without the need for additional walls.
The living room, dining area, and kitchen are arranged in an open sequence facing the patios, allowing cross-ventilation and visual depth. The kitchen, finished in cast-in-place terrazzo, operates as the organizing core of the ground floor and as a point of connection between interior and exterior.
The reorganization of vertical circulation was one of the project’s most significant moves. The main stair structures the transition between ground and first floors, while access to the roof terrace is resolved through a new suspended steel stair that projects from the first level without supports on the ground floor. Supported by a structural beam, this decision allowed the lower patios to be fully liberated, avoided intermediate columns, and maximized natural light penetration. Circulation thus becomes a continuous system in which each level connects without interfering with the one below, and the terrace functions as the natural culmination of the spatial sequence.
The original north–south orientation produced interiors characterized primarily by indirect light. The architectural strategy introduced new openings, expanded visual connections, and incorporated fired brick lattice screens to allow east–west light to traverse the volume. The house activates throughout the day: soft mornings, lateral flashes at midday, and warm reflections at sunset.
Materially, the project engages with a complex contemporary condition: working with finishes widely used in recent Mexican architecture, such as chukum and mineral-based plasters.
Beyond their generalized presence, the repetition of these materials has contributed to a certain homogenization of architectural and interior expression, where similar surfaces appear in houses, cultural centers, and commercial spaces without a clear relationship to context. In many cases, recent architecture could be situated almost anywhere.
Coyoacán, by contrast, is historically defined by color. One need only think of references such as La Casa Azul, where color constitutes urban identity. From the outset, we were interested in engaging this chromatic memory. The client requested chukum as a primary finish, and the process evolved into an active dialogue: decisions regarding contrast and material application were developed collaboratively, seeking a balance between local identity and contemporaneity.
A key decision was to delimit the material’s use. Chukum was not applied as a dominant finish throughout the entire house, but rather on surfaces that directly engage the exterior or conditions of moisture: façades, patios, and the roof terrace — as an open extension toward the city — as well as bathrooms and kitchen areas. The remaining interior surfaces were finished in smoother, more domestic plaster, generating an atmosphere that is restrained, inhabitable, and distinctly urban.
This differentiation establishes a clear logic: surfaces exposed to weather or water assume greater texture, color, and material density; dry interior spaces privilege continuity and calm. In this way, the material ceases to be a totalizing stylistic gesture and instead becomes a strategic resource, applied where its technical and sensory qualities are most meaningful.
