WORKS
SCENIC GARDENMX99 APT
C293 APT
DL1310 APT
PAVILION ( )
Z53 SOCIAL HOUSING
ODP APT
TL 2816
LEÓN SOCIAL HOUSING
CHAPULTEPEC 500
M193 APT
AL APT
HIYA
TORRE FLORENCIA
OKU
WELLNESS CENTER
DZ ATP
OKU PEDREGAL
P1 APT
CASA 11
OSTRERÍA 109
S20
G120
C47
FERRY TERMINAL
DL 5155 APT
HC APT
LUMA CAFÉ
JD LANDSCAPE
SPORTS CENTER
AVT APT
LP NO. 12
ARCHIVO PAVILION
SCHOOL IN TULUM
HANGING OBJECTS
ROBATA WINEBAR
LINEAR PARK
QUASI THING
IKZA
PAU SCHOOL OF ARCH.
SLIGHTLY FAMILIAR
JV APT
RESTAURANT IN TULUM
HOTEL IN SRI LANKA
IV APOTHECARY
IV APOTHECARY TJ
MAYORGA ROOFTOP
SANTA MARÍA APT
2875 APT
CONGRESO APT
PLI
ANAMUR SOCIAL CENTER
BOLICHE MARSELLA
TRIPAS SONORAS
SHOA MEMORIAL
BLUE RUIN
ÇANAKKALE ANTENNA
SPORTS COMPLEX
CH430 APT
TL2888 APT
EXPLORATIONS
VANISHING CONCRETEBRICK ORNAMENTS
STUCCO HATCHES
TERRAZZO
TRAVERTINE EXTRUSIONS
BOOLEAN TOTEM
WICKER GLITCH LAMPABOUT
PEOPLE
CORE SERVICES
NEWS
CONTACT
DL1310 APARTMENTS
In collaboration with Young & Ayata
This project is for a mid-market residential building in Mexico City, consisting of seven 1-2 bedroom apartments with parking in the basement. It was decided early on that the construction system would be cast-place-concrete, that the unit types would be simple and straight forward, and that the building would maximize its site footprint and allowed height. These were constraints that satisfied the client’s desires and simultaneously allowed us to focus our efforts on an interesting opportunity in the project, the apertures.
The site strategy drove the two side elevations toward the lot lines, making more standard windows undesirable. In order to allow light, view, and ventilation to all sides of the building, a scheme was developed to manipulate the windows into something familiar yet subtly strange. The rectangular windows are rotated into the building’s facade, resulting in two ruled surfaces at the top and bottom and transforming the window into an inverted trapezoidal bay. As the windows rotate in, the slabs appear to pull at the head and sill. This results in a facade that is both extremely blunt in its flatness and is also a dynamic bas-relief of smooth undulating shadows. These windows also produced different interior moments as the shifting facade met the standardized unit layout. Views out from the interior became small events of forced oblique perspective as one looked both out and down the street at the same time making each unit unique as it approached the enclosure.
The design process for the apertures was guided by both iterative digital models and research into the history of cast concrete ruled surfaces in the architecture of Latin America. A number of full-scale mock-ups allowed us to find a tectonic articulation that used board formed concrete as an integral expression of the aperture concept. The final methodology used traditional construction techniques combined with re-usable fiberglass casting modules to produce an alternative expression between digital technology and traditions of construction.
The site strategy drove the two side elevations toward the lot lines, making more standard windows undesirable. In order to allow light, view, and ventilation to all sides of the building, a scheme was developed to manipulate the windows into something familiar yet subtly strange. The rectangular windows are rotated into the building’s facade, resulting in two ruled surfaces at the top and bottom and transforming the window into an inverted trapezoidal bay. As the windows rotate in, the slabs appear to pull at the head and sill. This results in a facade that is both extremely blunt in its flatness and is also a dynamic bas-relief of smooth undulating shadows. These windows also produced different interior moments as the shifting facade met the standardized unit layout. Views out from the interior became small events of forced oblique perspective as one looked both out and down the street at the same time making each unit unique as it approached the enclosure.
The design process for the apertures was guided by both iterative digital models and research into the history of cast concrete ruled surfaces in the architecture of Latin America. A number of full-scale mock-ups allowed us to find a tectonic articulation that used board formed concrete as an integral expression of the aperture concept. The final methodology used traditional construction techniques combined with re-usable fiberglass casting modules to produce an alternative expression between digital technology and traditions of construction.
Location: Mexico City
Structure: Fair-faced reinforced concrete
Type: Apartment Building
Team: Isaac Michan Daniel, Narciso Martinez, Omar Acevedo, Jorge Sanchez
Status: Built
Size: 960 sqm
Year: 2020
Photos: Rafael Gamo, Alexandra Bové, Rafael Buzali
Structure: Fair-faced reinforced concrete
Type: Apartment Building
Team: Isaac Michan Daniel, Narciso Martinez, Omar Acevedo, Jorge Sanchez
Status: Built
Size: 960 sqm
Year: 2020
Photos: Rafael Gamo, Alexandra Bové, Rafael Buzali