Casa Estudio F36
CASA ESTUDIO F36
Estudio Tecalli
ARCHITECTS
Estudio Tecalli
LEAD ARCHITECTS
Roberto Martínez
TECHNICAL TEAM
Berenice León
GENERAL CONSTRUCTION
Manuel Miñon
PHOTOGRAPHS
Amy Bello
AREA
74 m²
YEAR
2025
LOCATION
Mexico
CATEGORY
Houses
English description provided by the architects.
Located in San Cristóbal Tepontla, a locality adjacent to San Pedro Cholula in the Puebla Valley, Mexico, this project represents the firm's second intervention in a territory deeply defined by its productive identity.
The area, recognized as one of the most important brick production centers in the region, features a singular urban landscape shaped by traditional kilns and extensive clay drying fields.
The immediate context is caught between two contrasting realities: the imposing natural presence of the Zapotecas Hill—a landmark for local hiking and cycling—and the rapid growth of the Zerezotla area, driven by real estate speculation.
The 110-square-meter lot is located within a gated community that has been filling up with commercial housing prototypes typical of real estate architecture in central Mexico.
The development is lush with nature, having served other purposes over the years, most notably as a nursery and an event garden.
From the beginning, the house was conceived as an individual residence for a performance artist and choreographer who wanted a space to incorporate some of her professional activities into the design.
The project aims to function as a container for both private and creative activities, maintaining direct contact with nature and vegetation, as well as the daily light cycles.
The ground floor is designed almost as a free plan, keeping the kitchen and service areas somewhat separate from the living area.
This main space needed the flexibility to be cleared completely, allowing it to be used for solo dance practice or even to host visitors for that purpose.
The ground floor also features a courtyard and a terrace, designed to complement the interior visually while acting as an extension of the program.
The upper floor contains only one bedroom with a small walk-in closet and a full bathroom. The design proposes the house as a single continuous space so that the small rooms still retain a sense of spaciousness.
The construction system is rooted in materiality and brutalism.
The entire building envelope and the interior are built with white brick, locally known as "Ajalpan brick," which offers excellent thermal and acoustic qualities while defining the character of the entire house.
The structural columns are concealed within the brick walls, and exterior ribs are added to the facade to free up space within the walls for the reinforced concrete elements.
For the window frames, custom ironwork was chosen as a nod to mid-twentieth-century modern Mexican architecture, whose window solutions remain memorable and appealing.
The floor slabs utilize prestressed concrete joists and open filler blocks, finished with a natural pigment made from the dust of the bricks themselves, thereby repurposing the waste material generated during the construction of the load-bearing walls.
