Brother Sister House
This is a project for a weekend house located on the outskirts of the historic town of Pátzcuaro, a town with a population of around sixty thousand people. This area of the state of Michoacán is rich in craftsmanship and culture. Several churches and convents dating from the 16th century can be found in the state. A town with well rooted traditions.
The climate is fresh and with high levels of humidity since the town surrounds Lake Pátzcuaro and there is a vast raining season.
The 600 square meter plot is situated in the last section of a new residential development. Behind this plot we find a forest reservation that shall not see future development. The plot has views of the lake and of the town’s historic center. The topography is uneven and has a 6 meter slope within the first 10 meters of the plot.
The owners, a dentist and his sister, a yoga instructor, wanted to share the houses yet have their own private and independent spaces.
The house’s starting point is a courtyard house. A traditional typology in local colonial architecture in which the built volume surrounds a central threshold. To create independence and correlation the volume takes a fragmented composition into two “L” shaped volumes. These volumes maintain the central threshold which will be shared but are now independent entities.
Both volumes have the same morphology yet the inside of the houses respond to the necessities of each. Like brothers and sisters, these houses have characteristics that make them look alike yet internally have their own personalities, they share spaces yet can be completely independent from each other. This project had a limited budget.
