Entrepinos

Two hours southwest of Mexico City, a complex of five sculptural dwellings stands in the town of Valle de Bravo. The architect, Héctor Barroso, principal of the Mexico City–based firm Taller Héctor Barroso, knows the area well; he’s been going there since he was a child. “It’s a very particular place,” he says, as the area features a variety of microclimates—mountains, forests, and a desert—and the town borders a prominent lake. He dubbed the residential project Entrepinos, or “between the pines,” after its forested and gently sloping site.

Entrepinos’ five 340-square-meter (3,660-square-foot) weekend houses are identical, save for a two-bedroom annex to the easternmost house. An additional small house on the site accommodates the groundskeeper.

The duplicated house scheme was conceived as a series of paths between and through volumes of varying heights. A ground-floor kitchen near the entrance is topped by a second-floor utility room. On each unit’s south side, a ground-floor dining room and office share a staircase to two bedroom suites on the upper level. To the west, another volume contains two stacked bedrooms, and two more volumes contain a half bathroom and a living room, respectively, on the ground floor. For sculptural effect, Barroso cantilevered the staircases outside of the structure—one of the more memorable details.

The houses are oriented toward outdoor living areas along the site’s south side, which allows for complete natural ventilation in the mild climate. Each house has two fireplaces as its sole source of heat, and openings arranged to take advantage of local breezes give ample cooling. Floor-to-ceiling glazing on the south side brings sunlight into each room that provides warmth, both literal and metaphoric.

The structure is simple: Exposed pine floors and ceiling joists are supported on masonry bearing walls, with supplemental concrete for reinforcement and the cantilevers. The houses are laid out on a 30-centimeter (approximately 12-inch) module, based on the thickness of the masonry walls.

Barroso also brought the outside in with materials culled from the site. A light texture was applied to the interior and exterior faces of the brick walls, the product of long conversations between the architect and the builders about how to create the desired finish using the soil from the foundation excavation. “We experimented with more red, less red, we tried different amounts of cement,” Barroso says. The mixture was eventually hand-rubbed onto the walls from buckets.

Although Barroso says that they “built around the existing trees whenever possible,” several trees were removed for the project. The wood from those trees, as well as from fallen trees on the site, became tables, benches, and built-ins. Of a piece with Luis Barragán and Louis Kahn, the poetic approach to the composition of space and materials produces a five-house complex deeply rooted in this “particular place.”

--Project Credits
Project: Entrepinos, Valle de Bravo, Mexico
Client: Withheld
Architect: Taller Héctor Barroso, Mexico City . Héctor Barroso Riba (principal); Vianney Watine, Thalia Bolio, Diego Ramirez (design team)
Structural: Ricardo Camacho
Engineering: Tomas Rodriguez
Landscape: Taller de Paisaje Entorno
Size: 1,700 square meters (18,299 square feet) (total); 340 square meters (3,660 square feet) (each house)
Cost: Withheld

This article appeared in ARCHITECT's February 2018 issue.