Casa GM
The house GM is located in the central district of Guadalajara (Jalisco, MX), in a block that is also host to the Robles-León house, the first completed project of Luis Barragán.
It is a transformation of an anonymous 1900 casona that, with the rest of the historic houses around, composes the image of the non-monumental core of the city. This image was shifting and low-resolution until, in 1997, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) defined a conservation plan establishing different levels of protection and control. Because of its proximity with Barragan’s project, and not because of its inherent qualities, the GM house presents the higher degree of protection –but there are no clear implications of such condition. As a result, the transformation has been determined by intense negotiations with the INAH and a changing team of municipal officers.
Determined by this framework, the project introduces and combines different domestic programs: two dwellings –one for each of the clients–, an office, and two short-stay apartments. To make room for this mix, and to articulate intimacy with collective exposure and interaction, a new body has been added on top of the back end of the historic casona . The existing rooms have been reprogrammed with few transformations, placing the office next to the street, the apartments along the access patio, and one of the dwellings around a second patio on the inner corner of the house. The second dwelling occupies the new volume, which, in opposition to the enfilade below, offers a sequence of open spaces leading to a sundeck, a kitchen garden, and a pool that overlooks the street.
