AGUA HOUSE
ViGa Arquitectos
ARCHITECTS
ViGa Arquitectos
AREA
6458 ft²
YEAR
2020
PHOTOGRAPHS
Angela Vizcarra
MANUFACTURERS
Cemex, AutoCAD, Color Surfaces, Comex, Grupo Arca, Illux, Nativa, Sistec
STRUCTURE
Grupo SAI
LEAD ARCHITECTS
Alberto García, Angela Vizcarra
DESIGN TEAM
Cristina Garcia del Valle, Julio Romero, Gabriela Fuente
LANDSCAPE
Patio
LOCATION
Mexico City, Mexico
CATEGORY
Houses, Renovation
Text description provided by architect.
Casa Agua begins with the intention of remodeling and expanding a house from the '70s to adapt it to its new users.
As part of a sustainable approach, it is intended to take advantage of the existing reticular structure, respecting the load-bearing walls and columns but always with the idea of opening the space to its maximum.
Casa Agua can be described through its circulation. The access to the house begins with a walkthrough next to the main garden leading to an exterior patio, which frames the main entrance, after passing a threshold on a smaller scale.
Once entering the house, this scale is increased into a double-height hall that is visualized as a wooden box that functions as a patio.
Flooded with natural light and crossed by a bridge, this hall becomes the pivot of the house which links the horizontal spaces -public and service- with the vertical ones -private-.
On the ground floor, the carpentry hides the structure in order to lighten the volume and allow the visual continuity of the open space.
The stairs that lead to the private area of the house, are confined to one side of the double-height.
The landscape is thought of as a series of spaces from where the house can be seen from its different angles.
The landscape work consists of recovering the existing lava layers with endemic vegetation, trying to erase the limits of the interior with the exterior.
On the upper floor, the roof of the garage as well as the planters are filled with green in order to control the views from the inside, these in turn are also limited through the lattice that covers the main facade in its entirety and which can be opened when it's needed.
