Reflections on a Lake

For his lakeside retreat just outside Mexico City, architect Bernardo Gomez-Pimienta designed everything from the house to the chairs to the china. Here, his wife, Loredana Dall' Amico, checks out the view from the balcony.

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Now home to a hillside resort town, the lake of Valle de Bravo was formed in 1946, in one of president Miguel Alemán’s hydroelectric dam projects. Casa Ia was named for the architect’s first child and planned with lake views as a primary objective.

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The house has what some architects would call an upside-down plan, with living spaces upstairs and bedrooms below. The upper story is strikingly transparent; the lower is camouflaged by thick, foliage-covered walls, which keep the sleeping areas cool.

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Loredana Dall’ Amico reads in the living room, where all the seating was designed by her husband. The floating stain­less steel unit behind her is also his design and contains a state-of-the-art stereo system.

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The kids and their mother relax in the pool area, their figures framed against a monochromatic background of steel and concrete.

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The lake, seen from the pool. The patio doors are held open by rocks that Gomez-Pimienta collected on various pilgrimages: Taliesin West in Arizona, Chateau Neuf du Pape in France, and others.

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Sold in some of Mexico’s larger cities (Mexico City and Guadalajara), as well as in New York and Paris, Bernardo Gomez-Pimienta's design line, BGP, is perfectly sampled at the house in Valle de Bravo. Because the kitchen, dining area, and living room are a single space where Gomez-Pimienta kept materials minimal, the individ­ual forms of the objects stand out. The Casa Ia tableware is that of the Habita Hotel; Java chairs surround the cantilevered concrete dining table; Attu armchairs welcome peaceful moments in the living room. Even the outdoor furniture is meticulously designed: “The easy chairs have a somewhat industrial structure due to the stainless steel, but the knitted plastic gives them a soft and gentle gesture,” he says.

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In the master bath, the architect managed to combine privacy and a view by adding a horizontal-line pattern to the glass wall.

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The rounded steel guardrails on the kids’ bunk beds are meant to inspire fantasies of nautical adventures.

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On the desk in the master bedroom, two Philippe Starck fly swatters sit aside a Tolomeo lamp from Artemide.

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