Promontory Villa.

Tapalpa, Jalisco, México. 2023.

The project is about the construction of a weekend house in the outskirts of Tapalpa, a town located in the upland mountains, south of the city of Guadalajara. The commission allowed us to question what should be like the project of a country house for a large family, where it was also possible to design from scratch the creation of native habitats of the surrounding landscape of the Villa. In this way, we took advantage of the generous dimensions of the land to produce a series of moments in the landscape in relation to the house, such as groves of trees that re-establish the region’s forested character, fields of wildflowers, gardens with seasonal flowering plants, an orchard for small cultivation and finally, large promontories of wildflowers that enclose the more private spaces and produce a sense of intimacy with nature. 

The house is organized using the patio-house typology, accommodating a series of modules that contain public and private rooms, and in whose interstices we can find visions that escape towards the exterior landscape. This conception based on fragments refers to the idea of “village”, understood as little town. To reinforce this idea, each of the rooms has a fireplace whose vertical geometry is clearly manifested in the general composition of the complex. There are also two types of landscape elements that end up building the idea of the enclosure: the promontories with endemic vegetation that surround the house and a monumental pond that produces a certain idea of centrality, because both the house and the adjacent playroom are arranged around it. An outdoor fireplace has been placed next to the pond, in relation to the distant mountain range views, which produces a space of contemplation within the natural landscape. Finally, the project tries to be a manifestation of the idea of an architecture that recovers elements and materials typical of the regional tradition, but made in a contemporary way.

PROJECT DATA

Architecture and Landscape design: Alejandro Guerrero | Andrea Soto | ATELIER ARS.

Team: Isabel Castiello, Roberto González, Inés Plasencia.

Horticulturalist: Juan Montaño.

Project: 2020-2022.

Construction: 2021-2023.

Photographs: César Béjar