Light-flooded new building of PPAA in Mexico City

Mexico City is by far the most populous metropolis in the country, new housing is being built in the smallest gaps and in the shortest time. In the Condesa neighborhood, however, the architectural firm PPAA has now built a carefully thought-out, modern townhouse.

by Jana Herrmann, 02.09.2020

Mexico City is a true Mecca for architecture lovers. There is a wide variety of architectural styles to see there, ranging from Aztec ruins and historic colonial architecture to Mexican modernism and contemporary buildings often inspired by it. But when new housing is built in the megametropolis, it is often not intended to be beautiful, but above all to be fast. Buildings in disrepair are torn down instead of renovated, houses are often illegally added on to, and every little gap is turned into building land. Little attention is paid in this local approach to the townhouse housing concept, which is otherwise part of a growing metropolis in many places.

Equally shared living space
One such was constructed by local architectural firm PPAA - Pérez Palacios Arquitectos Asociados - on an eight-meter-wide and 16-meter-deep lot on Calle Pachuca in the Condesa district. The three-story, 619-square-meter new building houses two narrow, side-by-side residential units with the same floor plan. While the street level accommodates a small entrance area and garages, the second floor of the house houses the open-plan living room with a spacious kitchen and a patio characteristic of Mexican architecture. In the other two upper floors, a bedroom and a bathroom were placed respectively.

Elongated light passage
PPAA's architects countered the narrow floor plan of the townhouse with continuous volumes of space and - on the middle living floor - high ceilings. In this way, they generated sufficient space and, above all, light, which enters the house interior through generous window fronts at the front and rear.

When choosing materials, the Mexicans focused on two materials. While floors, walls and ceilings are made of exposed concrete, furniture and fixtures were constructed of wood. Much of this was penned by the PUR design studio, the furniture label of PPAA architect Pablo Pérez Palacios. The floor-to-ceiling white oak kitchen units are custom-made, and the dining tables are one-of-a-kind pieces. Their 4.80-meter-long, five-centimeter-thick tops were made from a trunk of solid American white oak. The masterpiece in one of the two apartments is the wall of shelves in the living room, also constructed of white oak: It functions as a library, while at the back it embeds a staircase whose wooden steps seem to merge with the regular grid of the shelf.