Description
The topography and the local vegetation determined the unusual ground plan concept for this family home. Ricardo and Victor Legorreta, a Mexican practice, successfully integrated natural and architectural space, as they had done in a masterly fashion in earlier buildings. Interior and exterior space join to form a definite ‘spatial family’, aiming to embed itself in special topographical features. The key here is not the entirety of the outline of the building as an entity that is complete in itself, but a reactive spatial ensemble emphasizing the location. So the different function areas are in the form of individual, but linked, pavilions, with enough distance between them for the vegetation to make its mark.
The site on the rounded top of a wooded hill with an expansive view made a stepped arrangement of the sections possible, linked by long, curving walls followed by cascades of steps. Two guest apartments are sited on the upper level, and the route from them leads along a wall that is a segment of a circle to the cooking/dining/living area on the lower level. Here a garage with driveway courtyard and a loggia for the bedroom area are attached. A large terrace with swimming pool divides and links these zones to an equal extent. Despite the different individual areas, the overall figure does not break down, as the succinct, reduced formal language of cubic staggered sections with the simplest apertures, mostly unprofiled, and the evenly applied paint in an intense red homogenize the composition.
Drawings
Layout of the living and terrace area within the overall figure
Ground plan with access from the upper area of the slope to the courtyard and garages, with access to the eating area and main living room with playroom, adjacent bedroom area and stairs to the guestrooms above
Section AA through the stairs to the living room with terrace
Section BB through the living area and view of the guest wing on the right
Photos
Exterior view from the access courtyard
Exterior view of living terrace
Originally published in: Klaus-Peter Gast, Living Plans: New Concepts for Advanced Housing, Birkhäuser, 2005.