Pérez Palacios Arquitectos Asociados (PPAA) has finished a pair of valle de bravo houses in the forest of Valle de Bravo, Mexico. They share no fence. A stretch of regenerated native forest marks the line between them.
The two houses, collectively called Rejas, each measure 500 square metres (5,382 square feet). They were designed for two brothers and their families. The 1.2-acre forested site lies in Avándaro, a couple of hours west of Mexico City.
Pablo Pérez Palacios, founder of PPAA, said the project began with restraint. “Avándaro is a landscape that’s been quietly overbuilt for decades, so the first decision on Rejas was actually a renunciation,” he told Dezeen.
Rather than raise a wall, the team restored the native forest that the site had partly lost. That choice set the direction for everything that followed. “The whole project is really an argument for building less, so the landscape has room to eventually reclaim the architecture.”
Shaping two valle de bravo houses into the slope
The land drops steeply toward the Avándaro reservoir. That slope let PPAA sink each house partly into the hillside. From the driveway, each one reads as a single storey. As the ground falls away, the lower floors come into view on the far side.
Sites this steep reward careful placement, and Casa Amona’s earthy hilltop architecture in Mexico shows how a home can sink into its landscape and still frame wide views.
Concrete and local stone form the lower body of each house and grip the slope. Timber roofs, made from glued-laminated timber, crown the upper floors. The timber roofs open the spaces to the surrounding trees.
The two valle de bravo houses follow almost identical plans. Their placement on the hillside differs, so each one meets the land in its own way.
The upper level holds the shared rooms. A kitchen, dining room and living room sit inside a glass box set within a larger rectangular platform. A covered terrace fills the rest of the level. Planters frame its seating areas and outdoor cooking zones.
Below, five bedrooms sit within the forest floor, each with an ensuite bathroom. A lounge shares the same level. The boxy volume keeps these rooms cool and enclosed, according to the studio.
PPAA says the stepped form of both floors, in plan and in section, gives each of these valle de bravo houses its own privacy. The arrangement keeps the two homes apart without a barrier between them.
The openings are placed with equal care. No window in either house faces the other. Each home engages its own patch of forest as though the neighbouring house did not exist.
The architects moved the service areas for both valle de bravo houses into separate buildings along the edge of the property. That move cleared the centre of the plot for the houses and the views between them and the trees.
The material palette is spare by design. Stone and concrete give the base its weight, and mass timber defines the structure and the feel of the upper level. The studio expects the materials to weather and patina alongside the forest.
The contrast between heavy and light is deliberate. The studio describes it in its own words.
“This tension between the stone base that anchors and the glulam roof that liberates is neither an aesthetic operation nor a reference to any vernacular tradition,” the studio said. “It is a proposition about how to inhabit: what protects and what opens, what remains and what breathes, what belongs to the ground and what belongs to the air.”
PPAA has long built in concrete, including a subtractive house in Los Angeles. Its recent work has moved into mass timber. Two examples are a rotating cross-laminated timber pavilion in Mexico City and a structure in Querétaro that is described as Mexico’s first “all-wood” mass timber building.
Rejas tests how much a house must take up, a question that sits at the heart of much mexican architecture. Its answer is a forest allowed to grow back, with the architecture set into the slope and left to recede.
For another take on Mexican houses that grow out of their surroundings rather than dominate them, see Javier Senosiain’s mythology-inspired housing complex in Mexico City, an organic design with a distinctly different character.
Project credits:
Architecture: PPAA. Design team: Pablo Pérez Palacios, Emilio Calvo, Miguel Vargas, Jonathan Reséndiz, Adriana Hernández. Interiors: Mariana Morales.
Via dezeen.com
Frequently asked questions
Why did PPAA choose not to build a fence between the two houses?
Instead of raising a wall, the architects restored the native forest that the site had partly lost, and a stretch of regenerated forest now marks the line between the houses. Pablo Pérez Palacios described the initial decision as a renunciation, arguing that the project is an argument for building less.
How big is each of the Rejas houses in Valle de Bravo?
Each of the two houses, collectively called Rejas, measures 500 square metres (5,382 square feet). They were designed for two brothers and their families on a 1.2-acre forested site in Avándaro.
How do the Rejas houses sit on the steep hillside?
The land drops steeply toward the Avándaro reservoir, so PPAA sank each house partly into the hillside, making each read as a single storey from the driveway. Concrete and local stone form the lower body of each house and grip the slope, while glued-laminated timber roofs crown the upper floors.
How do the houses ensure privacy from each other?
The stepped form of both floors gives each house its own privacy, keeping the two homes apart without a barrier. No window in either house faces the other, so each home engages its own patch of forest.
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