WELT.

Residential Building, México City. 2019-2025.

Colonia del Valle is a well-known neighborhood in Mexico City, which evolved from being a place of country villas during the Porfiriato, to end up being integrated into the urban area of the city during the 20th century. Nowadays, it contains vestiges of very different periods, from Art Nouveau, functionalist and neocolonial houses to modern residential and office buildings and has been affected by a notable process of densification for years. In that part of the city, we were asked to develop a four-story building with seven apartments, on a quiet, closed street -where vertical residential buildings already predominated- on a plot of land where a single-family house previously existed. The scheme proposes some apartments that occupy the entire floor and others that encompass two per floor. The uniqueness of the proposal is the ovoid-shaped central courtyard, which, in addition to providing light and ventilation to the homes, helps to avoid direct views between them.This effect is enhanced by the depth of the windows and the inclusion of balconies or terraces. The façade facing the street -that has an orderly composition of vertical windows- subtly takes up the theme of the curve, providing a certain movement that contributes to lightening the massiveness of its structure.The entire building was constructed in exposed concrete using horizontal wooden form work.The project belongs to a typology that we have called Mantegna Variations, in which the possibilities of structures and spaces with a circular layout are investigated, a concern that arose from our visit to the Casa di Mantegna in Mantova, Italy.