This house in Mexico for an elderly couple functions 4 box-shaped buildings arranged about a central courtyard, three of which incorporate bedrooms and bathrooms for their visiting young children .
Casa 4.1.4 was designed by AS/D Asociación de Diseño as a weekend property for a couple in their 70s who have three children in their 30s.
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It comprises a 155-square-metre creating for the parents’ bedroom and the residing spaces, and three separate 25-square-metre buildings, every single housing a bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette for the children.
“They asked for a weekend home in the quick phrase, which could grow to be a permanent property in the prolonged phrase, where the young children and household could visit with no all becoming together,” the architects advised Dezeen.
The property was built on a vacant website amongst two properties constructed in the 1980s on the outskirts of Santiago de Querétaro, a city in central Mexico. To shun views of these residences and make the most of the temperate climate, the 4 buildings had been organized to face in towards a central courtyard.
“The views of the neighbouring properties are not spectacular, so we dispersed the house and made it inward searching to develop its personal context,” mentioned the Mexico City-based architects, whose other tasks consist of a holiday property with hundreds of perforations across its facade.
The arrangement of the buildings transforms the outside area into an integral element of the residence, each as a thoroughfare among rooms and as a central gathering space for the loved ones. Other houses on Dezeen that use a similar tactic contain a Vietnamese home on a constricted urban web site with trees increasing on the roofs of its five buildings, and a residence for a film director close to Marrakech, with 4 white rectangular buildings dotted all around a two-hectare internet site.
“The central plaza is a space where the family can appreciate a range of outside activities,” stated the architects. “It generates an interior-exterior connection, in which all the rooms have a direct connection with their surroundings.”
The architects made the home on a grid of squares measuring 5 by 5 metres, and came up with more than eight configurations for the 4 buildings prior to choosing on the ultimate arrangement.
“By placing a grid on the web site, we encouraged the owners to perform with the place of the buildings, but usually with the thought of a courtyard in the centre,” they stated.
The four buildings function glazed facades that open onto the courtyard and surrounding backyard, and smaller sized slot windows to bring in light and maintain privacy.
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The principal building also features a small glazed courtyard in its centre to bring a lot more light into the kitchen, dining space and residing space all around it.
The outdoor area is paved with granite and broken up with little pockets of landscaping, which includes two shallow rectangular ponds, and two Flamboyant trees, which are named soon after their magnificent show of bright red flowers when in bloom. The trees had been mostly chosen for their wide shady branches of fern-like leaves.
“The ponds have been extra to invite birds and insects to the courtyard,” mentioned the architects. “Lavender was also planted simply because it is recognized to entice bees.”
Marble was utilized for the flooring. Tzalam wood, which is a durable species common in Mexico, was selected for all the doors and kitchen cabinets.
The property was created with brick and concrete blocks, with steel frames additional to help the broad openings, and construction was completed in 1 12 months.
Photography is by Rafael Gamo Fassi.
Task credits:
Architectural design: Paola Morales Orantes and Fernando Velasco Rivera Torres, AS/D Asociación de Diseño
Project crew: Santiago García de Letona, Adela Rochmann, Eduardo Palomino, Piergianna Mazzoca, Fernando Polidura
Contractor: VQZ Arquitectura and AS/D
Structural engineer: Carlos Vargas
Axonometric diagram 
Ground floor prepare 
First floor program 
Sections Dezeen
