DL1310 Apartments

This article appeared in the Nov/Dec 2020 issue of ARCHITECT.

From a distance, DL1310 blends easily into its Mexico City surroundings—another concrete structure on the landscape. Upon closer inspection, however, the sculptural punched windows on the 10,300-square-foot, five-story multifamily building—which rises up from a base of local volcanic stone—animate the structure, each one canted to capture light and views and couched in double-curved, fair-faced concrete surrounds. Designed in partnership with New York– and Los Angeles–based Young & Ayata and local firm Michan Architecture, the mid-market, seven-unit structure is influenced by Mexican architect and concrete-innovator Félix Candela, particularly in its exploration of the material’s potential.

Located in the Tetelpan neighborhood in the southern part of Mexico City, DL1310’s gently sloping site is sandwiched neatly between two existing single-family homes. Though those neighboring structures are currently low-lying, the sites are both eligible for vertical growth under local code; to future-proof against potentially taller future neighbors and a loss of views, the architects shrunk the building footprint, pulling it back from the lot lines to give breathing room between the sites. As an added benefit, local zoning regulations allow for an additional floor of height on the smaller footprint, ultimately maximizing the project’s square footage and allowing for windows on all four sides. “By pulling in from the side lot lines, we’re able to get windows, but then you have a window that’s going to look into a future building that’s right there, which is not so desirable,” says Young & Ayata principal Michael Young.

The architects developed a unique fenestration scheme to preserve interior views, setting the windows at a diagonal to the cast-concrete exterior and framing views that run obliquely up and down the street. “The condition that results from these oblique windows fully transforms a normative floor plan in terms of how it’s an experienced space,” says Young & Ayata principal Kutan Ayata.

The team used traditional timber formwork to create five sizes of more economical fiberglass molds that registered the boards’ grain and seams. With them, the contractors cast 22 windows in total, which together create “a bas relief, more of a simple surface that begins to push in,” according to Ayata.

These trapezoidal apertures also bring daylight deep into the floor plate. “Because of the proportion of what’s concrete and what’s glass, you see a very enclosed building and don’t expect it to have that much light” inside, says Isaac Michan, founding principal of Michan Architecture. “It’s interesting, this notion that when you’re outside, it looks almost like a bunker—like something enclosed—and then you enter and light hits you from all different places.”

Contradictions are crafted into DL1310—the design for which won a 2019 P/A Award—including the plasticity and rigidity of its façade and the monolithic exterior and porous, light-filled interior. But there’s little mystery. “It destabilizes the familiar,” Ayata says. “The strangeness in this project is specifically what happens to a typical window when it rotates out of concrete. It’s as simple as that.”

Project Credits
Project: DL1310. Mexico City
Client: Withheld
Design Architect: Young & Ayata, Brooklyn, N.Y., and Los Angeles, in collaboration with Michan Architecture, Mexico City . Kutan Ayata, Michael Young (Young & Ayata principals); Sina Ozbudun (Young & Ayata project team); Isaac Michan (Michan Architecture principal); Narciso Martinez, Jorge Sanchez (Michan Architecture project team)
Interior/Lighting Designer/Landscape Architect: Young & Ayata in collaboration with Michan Architecture
Structural Engineer: Montes de Oca Ingenieros Consultores
M/E/P/Civil Engineer: Inversa
Construction Manager/General Contractor: M2 Grupo Inmobiliario
Size: 10,300 square feet
Cost: Withheld

This project won an award in the 2019 Progressive Architecture Awards

text by Ian Volner

“While design trends toward translucency and lightness, with a built aesthetic to match, I like
that this project resists that. It provides a sense of thickness and depth that is very skillful and super effective.” —J. Frano Violich, FAIA

Concrete seems as much a native Mexican material as the rough volcanic stone of the country’s pre-Columbian temples. It seems only natural, then, that Brooklyn, N.Y.–based designers Young & Ayata should turn to the hard stuff for their first major project in Mexico’s bustling capital. But they have brought something new to the city as well. Designed with local firm Michan Architecture, the DL 1310 apartment building is the product of extensive research into the technical capabilities of and local traditions in concrete design, redeploying the geometric fancies of Félix Candela and Miguel Fisac to solve the issues of a challenging site.

Forced to push the building back into the lot in order to be permitted to increase the structure’s height, and to hew strictly to a simple four-square floor plan, the architects decided to discard conventional fenestration, fearing it would provide suboptimal light and views while rendering the façade all but lifeless. Instead, the team pressed apertures into the envelope at a sharp angle, resulting in a dynamic pattern of trapezoidal windows that make each apartment different from the next. Even within a single unit, the slanted glazing makes for dramatic shifts in perspective, creating a domestic space that’s anything but static.

On closer inspection, the exterior reveals still greater subtleties: the recessions in the skin aren’t cuts but rotations, ones that have left elegantly curved traces under the lintels. This air of understatement is rare for all-concrete construction, and a key asset given the context—a residential neighborhood of mostly one- and two-story single-family houses, where the mid-rise structure might otherwise have come as an unwelcome intruder. As it is, its subdued presence combines with its bold materiality to make DL 1310 doubly at home in Mexico City, proving Young & Ayata and Michan Architecture’s commitment to creating original statements that are more than just novelties.

Project Credits
Project: DL 1310 Apartments, Mexico City
Client: M2 Grupo Inmobiliario
Architect: Young & Ayata, Brooklyn, N.Y., in collaboration with Michan Architecture, Mexico City . Kutan Ayata, Michael Young (Young & Ayata principals); Sina Ozbudun (Young & Ayata project team); Isaac Michan (Michan Architecture principal); Narciso Martinez, Jorge Sanchez (Michan Architecture project team)
Interior/Lighting Designer/Landscape Architect: Young & Ayata in collaboration with Michan Architecture
Structural Engineer: Montes de Oca Ingenieros Consultores
M/E/P/Civil Engineer: Inversa
Geotechnical Engineer: Izquierdo Ingenieros y Asociados
Construction Manager/General Contractor: M2 Grupo Inmobiliario
Size: 16,500 square feet
Cost: 14.4 million Mexican peso (approx. $756,000 USD)