Initiated in 2021 and built in 2024, C293 is a residential adaptive reuse project located in Condesa, CDMX. The project consists of 5 apartments: one per floor and a lobby with parking garage on the ground floor. There are 2-bedroom apartments from the 1st to the 4th floor, and a 1-bedroom penthouse on the top floor with a setback and 360-degree view terrace.

It is an intervention of an existing structure of reinforced concrete column and slab building from the 1970s. Michan Architecture unified the original structure with a new contemporary design and reconfigured the interior and apartment layouts to accommodate current needs.

The silhouette and balconies of the C293 Apartments takes inspiration from the Art Deco buildings that are commonly found in Condesa, with a reinterpretation of the motifs into a play of straight light and tangential curves to add internal walls, balconies, parapets, and planters.

Michan Architecture’s design utilizes the existing cast-in-situ concrete slabs with inverted beams that were hidden with stucco to connect new and preexisting. New additions such as internal walls, balconies, parapets, and planters uses the same type of formwork (wooden stipes) to blur the boundaries between old and new, creating areas for a landscape that dress the building in green living plants.

The project questions notions of preservation as the new building does not try to preserve the original appearance but rather reuse something that was hidden: the concrete slabs once covered in stucco with an addition that matches and creates a new dialogue for adapting and transforming structures of value in Mexico City and beyond.

Location: Campeche 293, Condesa, Mexico City
Type: Adaptive Re-Use, Apartment Building, 5 units (6 stories), ground-level parking
Structure: Fair-faced reinforced concrete
Size: 1190 sqm / 12809.05 sft
Status: Built, 2024; Started 2021; Groundbreaking 2022
Team: Fernando Gomez, Fernando Alamilla, Benjamin Caballero, Pilar Colado, Alexandra Bové, Isaac Michan Daniel
Collaborator: Tarek Gutierrez
Photos: Arturo Arrieta