Скачать или смотреть Volcanic Stone House is Geometry and Material. Nothing More.

The order for the residence came with the explicit demand to carry out a construction using stone as the main material. The decision doesn't necessarily respond to aesthetic reasons but rather to the fact that stone is a commonly used material in the region and has a low maintenance level and cost per square meter built.

The MA residence is located in the outskirts of Tepoztlán, a small picturesque village with pre-Hispanic origins that has an urban center. About 60 km from Mexico City, Tepoztlán is characterized by its sunny and mild days throughout the year, as well as its lush nature. Water plays a leading role during the rainy seasons, moments when the vegetation demonstrates the intense vitality of nature.

The design of the MA residence is a quest for a luminous, spacious, and comfortable spatiality, built from a material that is initially rigid and cumbersome: stone. With views of two spectacular mountain ranges in frontal positions and neighbors on both sides in the opposite direction, the house is a basic volumetric exercise: to open the views and main spaces to the mountains, and to minimize the openings on the sides. Additionally, the definition of a central and open courtyard was determined, a cleft that marks the access to the house. Nevertheless, the residence is far from being a courtyard house, as those are built around a central courtyard, a reference from which all circulations and relationships in this type of project are established.

The functioning of the design unfolds through its outer perimeter: the house is a succession of spaces with differentiated uses, which determines the boundary of a regular square. This continuity of regular and perimeter circulations overlaps with a second strategy of succession of open and closed spaces: the external spaces, these covered courtyards, intersect the volume diagonally and break with the rigidity of the perimeter functioning.

Finally, the residence is formed by the sum of three pavilions unified by the same roof, generating two covered courtyards: a continuous roof that rests on a structural stone understood as texture, as an imposing and rough material that builds the space, which designs the views reinforcing the power of nature. The house is a sequence of open and mutable relationships with nature, always with the two enormous mountain ranges of Tepoztlán as a backdrop.

Locally sourced from the area, the exposed volcanic stone was the main building material, authentically connecting the house to its environmental context. Selected by the architects as a low-maintenance and low-cost material, it also proved difficult to work with. "Using it structurally, and not just as a finishing material, was a challenge," he says about the stone. "The walls are 40 cm thick and truly bear the entire load of the house. Nothing in the house is decoration. If it's there, it's because it's functioning structurally." The MA residence is geometry and material. Nothing more.

Project credits:

Architect: Cadaval & Solà-Morales
Location: Tepoztlán, México
Project year: 2016
Area: 300 m²
Photographer: Sandra Pereznieto
Collaborators: Eduardo Alegre, Orsi Maza, Alexandra Coppieters
Interior Design: Martha Perez
Landscape Design: Martha Perez
Structural engineering: Ricardo Camacho de la fuente

0:00 - MA House
5:10 - Drawings