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
SCENIC GARDEN
CHAPULTEPEC
The site concept and planning strategy was clear: land free of trees would be dug out and utilized to transform the site into a landscape of low hills and lakes. This topographic complexity generates a series of public spaces of intimate scale, favoring multiple outdoor activities. At the same time, the topography itself allows for the necessary acoustic and visual protection in the areas that require it. The intervention minimizes its impact on existing ecosystems while creating new ecosystems and microenvironments across five distinct areas. The first area focuses on reforestation with a variety of trees like Pines, Oyameles, and Oaks as part of the forest recovery program. The second area, situated in sunny hills, features xerophyte-stony vegetation requiring less water. Pollinator gardens are proposed in the prairie area with abundant sunlight, connected by routes to other parts of the program, while understory gardens thrive in shaded areas with existing trees. Lastly, intermittent water gardens associated with bodies of water form the fifth group, contributing to the lacustrine-riparian ecosystem. The topography of the project also facilitates the management of the water resources of the site, being possible to store them in the generated ponds. The small variations in height of the terrain naturally produce diverse scenarios that favor biodiversity.
The architecture of Scenic Garden comprises the Auditorium, Rehearsal and Cafeteria Pavilions follows two main strategies to: 1) integrate and maximize the use of the soil and landscape into the function use of the program and 2) create a minimal gesture in defining each unique use. Each pavilion diminishes the boundaries between architecture and landscape, between interior and exterior, inviting people to experience and participate in what’s happening.
To maximize privacy and acoustics, auxiliary program is integrated into the low hills, creating open collaborative and flexible spaces with nature as the backdrop. inside the hills, ensuring the functionality of the Pavilions while enjoying nature as a backdrop. Atop the Auditorium Pavilion, the performative roofs rests on the landscape and creates a destination for the community to experience the new cultural and natural laboratory in the heart of the city.
Beyond their spaces, the pavilions generate life that multiples potential and impact for generating unexpected programs and contributing to the civic and cultural discourse of Mexico City.
Location: Bosque de Chapultepec, Mexico City
Type: Park and Auditorium, Rehearsal, Cafeteria Pavilions
Size: Park 70,000 sqm / 7 hectares / 17 acres
Auditorium Pavilion 1,120 sqm/ 12,055 sqft,
Rehearsal Pavilion 560 sqm/ 6,027 sqft
Cafeteria Pavilion 375 sqm/ 4,036 sqft
Status: Built, 2024; Competition First Prize, 2022; Groundbreaking, 2023
Team:
Architecture: Michan Architecture/ Isaac Michan Daniel, Alexandra Bové, Narciso Martinez, Fernando Gomez, Juan Pablo Salas, Indira Fernández, Fernando Alamilla, Jose Perez, Sonia Mendez, Ximena Ibarra, Ricardo Marentes, Gerardo Guevara
Parabase/ Carla Ferrando Costansa, Pablo Garrido Arnaiz
Landscape: Taller de Paisaje/ Entorno Tonatiuh Martínez, Alejandra Aguirre, Karen Michelle, Alexa Martinez, Miranda Elizabeth Inman, Gisela Reyna Miranda, Zaid Puente, Theo Cozzi, Perla Flores, Gustavo Adolfo Huelva
Landscape Engineering: Taller de Ingenieria y Diseño/ Juan Ansberto Cruz, Javier Garcia
Theater Consultancy: Theater Projects/ Jules Lauve, Scott Crossfield
diseñOteatral/ Itzel Alba
Acoustic Consulting: Sound Arts/ Cristian Ezcurdia, Jaume Soler
Structural Engineer: Inesco/ Luis Perez
MEP: Sinergia Arquitectura Integral/ Francisco Olivares
MX99 APT
MX99 is the adaptive reuse of a 1970s building facing the Parque Mexico, a large urban park located in Colonia Hipódromo in the Condesa area of Mexico City. It is recognized by its Art Deco architecture and decor as well as being one of the larger green areas in the city. The project consists of 65 studio apartments and the lobby and two restaurants on the ground floor. With a contemporary design, the original structure is preserved and restructured while the overall design completely reconfigures the interior and apartment layouts to accommodate current needs.
Each floor has an internal corridor with units overlooking the park and units on back having views of an internal courtyard. Inside each unit, bathrooms are in the back, opening the rest of the space to the view to the park with a flexible open space for sleeping, living room, dining with and cooking.
On the exterior, Michan Architecture’s designs add a continuous balconies that offset and follow the building’s curve facing the park. It also reduces the dimension of the preexisting concrete beam facing the façade by stepping the slab, creating an inverted stair result. The balcony is also intersected with the new reinforcement of the columns located at the same axis, producing an effect of a solid mass excavated in the internal living spaces.
Location: Av México 99, Condesa, Mexico City
Type: Adaptive Re-Use, 65 Studio Apartments (7 stories), no parking
Structure: Fair-faced reinforced concrete
Status: Built 2024, Started 2021; Groundbreaking 2022
Size: 4,586 sqm/ 49,363.29 sqft
Team: Fernando Gomez, Pilar Colado, Rodrigo Malo, Benjamin Caballero, Alexandra Bové, Isaac Michan Daniel
Photos: Arturo Arrieta
C293 APT
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.
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
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
PAVILION ( )
In Collaboration with Colectivo Seis, Kababie Arquitectos, Taller Paralelo
A box on the outside.
When entering the space, the box has a completely different logic and becomes a subtraction of an inverted vault.
A concavity is presented within a continuous surface without roof.
An oasis within the chaotic historic city center.
The pavilion ( ) was design as a mute space on the outside but with an intriguing contradiction on its inside.
The project is part of MEXTRÓPOLI 2018, the largest architecture forum in Latin America where there are pavilions, workshops and lectures. The pavilion was located the Alameda Central, in the Historic Center of Mexico City and had a short life of four days.
When entering the space, the box has a completely different logic and becomes a subtraction of an inverted vault.
A concavity is presented within a continuous surface without roof.
An oasis within the chaotic historic city center.
The pavilion ( ) was design as a mute space on the outside but with an intriguing contradiction on its inside.
The project is part of MEXTRÓPOLI 2018, the largest architecture forum in Latin America where there are pavilions, workshops and lectures. The pavilion was located the Alameda Central, in the Historic Center of Mexico City and had a short life of four days.
Location: Mexico City
Structure: Masonry brick with steel reinforcement
Type: Temporary Pavilion
Team: Colectivo Seis, Kababie Arquitectos, Taller Paralelo
Status: Built
Size: 36 sqm
Year: 2018
Photos: Jaime Navarro
Structure: Masonry brick with steel reinforcement
Type: Temporary Pavilion
Team: Colectivo Seis, Kababie Arquitectos, Taller Paralelo
Status: Built
Size: 36 sqm
Year: 2018
Photos: Jaime Navarro