Cantina Mexicana Restaurant / Taller Tiliche

Architects: Taller Tiliche
Location: Mexico City, Mexico
Project Team: Alberto Bustamante, Rodrigo Escandón, Manuel Bueno, Jerónimo Jiménez, Guillermo González, Jessica Sherwell
Project Year: 2011
Photographs: LGM Studio – Luis Gallardo

This Mexican food restaurant designed by young architects firm Taller Tiliche, unveils some structural elements form the building, they projected this space with a polished concrete floor but purposefully they left the ceiling unfinished. Sanded wooden tables and stools furnish the restaurant and slatted panels screen the doors and windows.

The shelves located between the walls of the restaurant are filled with bottles and mexican tradicional products, while a kitchen is located in a room next door. The project combines the retail space with space to eat, generating a combination between the displays, production areas, and consumption, also the bars of attention and shelves create enclosed spaces, organize the flows and create different environments for customers.

The result is such a shop, what you see is what you get, and you can buy to take away or eat there. The space was designed with very basic materials. The floor was made of polished concrete and it has a direct relationship with the outside, getting pedestrians invited to the site, there are no divisions between public-private conditions of space.

All existing walls were made with a first basement made of concrete tiles from 0.0 to 1.2 meter, then was generated a second basement of white walls, ending with the existing roof as enclosure. It was important to use materials in their natural conditions (concrete, wood, galvanized sheet, etc..), in order to get low-cost, low maintenance and to show their construction process.

For doors and windows designed a system of fixed and folding shutters of wood that can interact with the outside weather conditions and to adapt the space. This same solution was replicated at all doors and windows to filter light inside the room.

Text provided by Taller Tiliche