MEIR LOBATON CORONA

Casa Sarquis

in collaboration with: Rafael Ortiz, Armando Montejano, Fermin Andrade

type: Residential // location: San Angel, Mexico City, Mexico // status: built

description: On a plot of land of uneven geometry, in a residential zone south of Mexico City, the client, a businessman that manages public parking spaces, needed a residence for himself and his family; with additional space for the two teenage sons from his previous marriage. He wanted a house that would allow each of its residents certain independence, and at the same time, a sense of family unity. In consequence, the proposal consisted on two independent volumes linked by a bridge.

Among the requirements, he wanted an underground parking space with enough capacity for five to eight cars. To build it, it was necessary to excavate half of the land’s surface; therefore it was decided to terrace the whole lot: the common spaces of the house are half buried in relation to the street level, and the private rooms are on the first floor.

Typically in this kind of houses, the upper level is a consequence of the solutions found for the lower level, and the spaces are repeated on both levels, for different uses. In this project, each one of the spaces was designed separately and later assembled, like a three-dimensional collage. The end result is an asymmetric volume conceived as a great piece of excavated concrete, where the spaces are created by removing matter, and not by standing against it.