From the outside, Casa San Cristobal looks much like the other homes in Mérida’s historic center, with a tall plaster wall that faces the street—no front garden, no way to peek inside. The only signs that something special lies behind the pale-green facade are the sleek house numbers and two bright-blue doors.

These hints do little to prepare you for entering the dramatic 2,381-square-foot home that architectural designer Marc Perrotta shares with his husband, travel writer and editor John Newton, and their miniature Pinscher, Lily Beth. A towering front room spans the width of the property, the laptops on a concrete-top table and a low bookshelf running along the wall indicating that it’s the couple’s home office. A 10-foot-tall cased opening leads to a dining room enlivened by vintage and contemporary wood furniture.

Both spaces—the two remainders of the house’s original Spanish colonial–era structure—form an L alongside a traditional courtyard with tall walls that frame the tropical sky above. At the far end of the dining room, another 10-foot opening reveals a procession of textured living spaces with sliding glass doors that connect to gardens stringing down the long, wall-enclosed site.

Here begins the two-level addition, where traditional details like patterned cement tiles and beveled door frames give way to a more contemporary, glass-and-concrete design tempered by hardwoods and local stone. Throughout the home, hand-plastered walls reveal the sweep of the arm that applied the texture, adding further warmth to the interior and connecting the new and historic sections. The whole sequence leads to a cheerful retreat at the back of the property, where a bright-pink casita with a guest room, laundry, and roof terrace overlooks a tranquil pool.

The front room also features a Jolly table from Kartell, a table by local workshop Chuch Estudio, and Harry Bertoia side chairs.

In his earlier life, Marc was a senior project manager at Gluckman Tang Architects in New York City. During that time, he, John, and Lily Beth rented the first floor of a modest Brooklyn house with a small garden in back. Inveterate travelers, the couple often spoke of moving abroad because, John says, “We didn’t meet until our 40s, so there was something appealing about having an adventure together somewhere.”

After several research trips to compare their options, Mérida, Mexico, won. “If we moved to Berlin or Amsterdam, we would live in another apartment,” John says. But in the capital of the southeastern state of Yucatán, the couple would have the budget and space to design and build their own home. Plus, they already had friends from Mérida, and they’d met other interesting expats there, “working at their own pace and pursuing their own interests,” Marc says.

So in February 2019, the men began looking for a teardown—or a mostly teardown—in the city’s historic center. The standout was a house formerly used as a dentist’s office. (The seller’s agent said the dentist had left to become a nun.)

Marc and John filled much of the home with artwork and furniture by local creators. In the living room, Colima chairs and a Chihuahua coffee table, both by Mexico City design studio Comité de Proyectos, accompany a Kubiko sofa from Marbol. The drapes are from Telas Bayon." layout="" credit="Add credit" photoUserId="6532457749351469056"/>

“The idea was to make the house a string of pavilions so there could always be air flowing through them.”
—Marc Perrotta, designer and resident

The original colonial-era structure was appended by additions that lacked an overarching plan except that a space be left at the center of the lot for a royal palm tree. But the salvageable historic section, coupled with the lot’s size and location—not to mention the charm of its palm—made Marc and John’s decision easy. By February’s end, the property was theirs.

When Marc mentioned to an acquaintance, Mérida architect Farid Yagué, that they were looking for a contractor, Yagué recommended a former student, architect Jorge Novelo Caamal of local workshop Paralelo 20. (Mexican architects often work as their own contractors; architecture students graduate with all the practical skills they need to build.)

Marc and John immediately liked Novelo Caamal’s practicality, and beyond that, having Novelo Caamal as contractor meant he could also act as architect of record for the project, simplifying the local paperwork. Novelo Caamal was excited by the challenge of working with Marc’s design: “Marc was looking for a pure kind of structure, one without much decorative finishing or paint,” he says. “So that added another level of difficulty.”

When construction began in March 2020, the plan was for Marc to visit monthly. Almost immediately, Covid shut the world down—but although traveling became impossible, progress continued. “We passed images and PDFs back and forth to coordinate the work,” Marc says.

He adapted some of his original plans to better fit the local climate, available materials, and skills of the tradespeople. The screen walls in two stairwells, for example, had been designed to be cedar, but since the wood doesn’t age well in humidity, brick was chosen instead.

The pool the couple wanted also required some thoughtful planning. To avoid an expensive excavation through the site’s limestone layer, they raised the back of the property by four feet, using the rubble from demolition as fill material.

They placed the new living room atop this raised platform perpendicular to the rest of the addition. The room is bracketed by sliding glass doors that offer views of the kitchen and a dry garden on one side and of the casita and pool and a jungle garden on the other. The space has a dreamy, tree house ambience, a surprise even to Marc. “We have this visual connection between the kitchen and living room,” he says. “But the living room becomes a solitary pavilion raised up with a vista across the courtyard.”

John, who holds a horticulture certificate from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, worked with local landscape designer Rodrigo Escamilla, whom Novelo Caamal knew from college, to find native plants for the home’s differing gardens. The first, alongside the colonial building, follows Mexican tradition, with bougainvillea climbing the tall, off-white property wall and a perimeter of flowerpots set on paving stones.

Between the kitchen and living room, the dry garden’s bed of limestone gravel is dominated by the royal palm, surrounded by native plants—agave, euphorbia, a ponytail palm, and cacti. The jungle garden, which flanks the pool, is a lush swath of heliconias, a banana tree, wild orchids, beach lilies, and plumerias.

“Our realtor described living in houses in Mérida as like camping,” John adds, noting the fluid flows between indoors and outdoors in the area’s traditional homes. “We wake up, and we don’t have to walk out to the garden. We are in the garden.”

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Marc Perrotta (Design) and Paralelo 20 (Contractor)

Structural Engineering: Sumycon

Landscape Design: Jardines Nativos Mexicanos

—

Head back to the March/April 2022 issue homepage