Guanajal House
The project arises from the need of a family to have a rest house away from the chaos of the city, the site is located in a central area of Mexico between the states of Guanajuato and Jalisco.
We start from the idea of two traditional typologies of the region and the countryside. The cabin, as a space that is intimately related to the natural environment and a warmer scale, a space of isolation and reflection; and on the other hand the “hacienda”, as a space that creates its own atmospheres through the courtyards and gardens, which serve to extend the activity from the inside to the outside.
The land is much longer than wide, so the architectural program was scattered across the land to generate promenades inside and outside the house. We take advantage of the elongated layout of the land to juxtapose in the narrowest sense the roofed spaces and create complementary open spaces between them.
Volumetrically, 3 bodies are generated that are delimited with a very traditional element of the region, the barrel vault. Each of these vaults works like cabins that are transformed according to their location and use.
The first works as a house for visitors, a guest room and the room with its fireplace that invites to rest in the double height of access; the second contains family rooms that allow you to have more contact with the surrounding landscape, and finally the third vault fades to a scale closer to the garden, to simply generate a roof that, like a tree, creates shade so that we can enjoy more external activities such as the campfire or the pool.
We wanted to generate not only a facade, but a landscape that between solids and voids adapts to a more rural environment, where the vaults and materials dialogue with the open field.
