Comercio 117 / ARCHETONIC

Architects

ARCHETONIC
Location

Comercio, Escandón, Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico City, Federal District, Mexico
Category

Renovation
Project Architect

Jacobo Micha Mizrahi
Project Area

1883.0 m2
Project Year

2012
Photography

Rafael Gamo

Collaborators

Ernesto Rossell Zanotelli, Alfredo Muñoz Jimenez, Désirée Gómez Córdoba, Aldo Moreno Gamboa

Text description provided by the architects. The architectural project is essentially composed of an intervention to a building built in the 1950s that served as storage but is now taken as raw material to provide shelter to the new housing program, developing 18 departments made possible by leveraging and strengthening the existing structure. The entire development was designed with simple elements, strong and inexpensive materials, respectful of the nature of the assignment, which resulted in not only the architectural piece, but a successful business as well.

In the formal part of the project, we face a facade with a mixture of styles, where our main goal was to provide uniformity and standardize the elements of this unique street facade, which would harmonize to the interior-exterior relationship. One of the advantages of the location of the project is the presence of a beautiful and monumental jacaranda in front of the building. We use nature to our advantage as a key element of the project and then design a simple and unassuming facade that allows the passage of the light through it to find the beautiful green and purple leaves; at the same time, these organic and amazing shapes of the trees are projected as shadows on the facade, giving life to the facade of the new proposal, nature being the protagonist of the story.

To maintain consistency in color, allow the penetration of sunlight, generate interior-exterior views, and resolve security concerns, we use an Irving type mesh to provide a new skin, giving a sober, simple and elegant appearance to the building. We found useful and logical to use a strong material for the facade, and a mesh that would respond to a large number of conditions where one of the main issues was safety.