Interior Design Ideas Small Space Gray: November 2008

The Project consists on a restoration and addition of an existing house in the old part of the city of Acapulco, México. Acapulco in the 50’s and 60’s was a Hollywood Town, full of glamour and money, where all the rich and famous used to hang out from John Wayne to John F Kennedy and Maria Felix, where good taste and modern architecture, mixed with the beautiful landscape of the bay and cliffs, this condition has changed with the years, the city got old, needs urgent new infrastructure and hast lost some of this classic scent for most part of the city, this except for the old town, that still –in a decay way- the great modern living in the tropics.

This is the case of this house, “casa 3”, situated in the original Acapulco Town, very near the yatch Club that held the nautical activities of the 1968 Olympics, a house build by functionalist architect Hector Mestre in the year 1953, in a complex of 5 house, this particular house with a special condition, that is placed right on the bay with no construction obstructing the view of the old port, the ancient fort and the Modern bay.

Our clients asked for an addition and a renewal, for us the challenge was to conserve the original architecture with the new expectations of living in the 21’st century, more space of storage, new technology and new dynamics and programs in contemporary families.

The addition consists, in redistributing the bathrooms, more open, much more space, and a new living-terrace-bar-dinning space with a new pool facing the bay, as the original pool was placed in a back terrace. The materials are place with the criteria of not competing with the old house but not to be lost with them. Showing what is new and what is old, with out making a competition was a clear strategy for us.

The new area is the main heart of the house, articulating all of the other areas, including an old Salt-water pond in the lower part of the site.

Project: 2006

Construction: 2007

Location: Acapulco, Guerrero

M2: 600
http://www.at103.net/

The structure and location of country houses is the result of a century-long study of ways toovercome conditionings such as topography and climate, and search for integration andharmony with the surrounding landscape.

Most country houses were built in phases, as one can see in the variety of styles, continuously added. Thus, rural architecture is based on implicit and traditional design processes, which although do not exclude formalization, do limit it to a strong relation with the existing elements. The neutral character of the country houses typology, allowed the introduction of new constructive and decorative elements, as well as the necessary amplifications.

The composition of the three buildings is located in the end of a valley and laid aside a slope in the terrain at north. Consisting of the main house, a hut and a smaller annex, it totally domains the valley that precedes it.

The intervention emerged from the reasoning and experimenting when connecting the different parts intended to preserve, and redefining new accesses to them.
The existing volumes added to the main house, which originally had both ground floor and 1st floor, were moved and separated from the main building, creating a void between the main house and the new annex. This cut in the soil becomes the distribution hall to the three different pieces, uniting the spaces at ground level and providing daylight through the soft ramp on the other side of the entry.

The three volumes remain separated at first floor, suggesting the image of the typical dispersed country houses, common in this region.

The new annex is shaped like an abstract volume, remaining those volumes of existing shed-roofs totally enclosed with steel sheets of different dimensions. The special detail of the union, made by a deep-shadow joint between each piece, recalls the separated wooden laths farmers used to use when closing big openings in the facades of their storage houses. Considered as a very private space the annex contains only a bedroom, bathroom and dressing room, where three main openings reveal the exterior surroundings.