Gardenia House

Casa Gardenia is conceived as a shelter in the rural landscape, in the village of San Simón el Alto, México, as an answer to the need of silence and nature in contrast with the urban living of Mexico City.

The particularities of the context, the light and scales, along with the pure volume of a traditional cabin, allowed us to develop a plastic exploration that resulted in this contemporary cabin.

The cabin is conformed by a double-height public space that opens to the exterior. In this area a deck extends the activities into the more natural surroundings. The private area is comprised by two bedrooms on the ground floor and a master bedroom upstairs, where the master bathroom breaks the roof geometry and creates and open terrace with a view.

The structure of the volume consists in main steel frames, columns and beams, with concrete block walls on the ground level and drywall on the upper level. The roof system was mounted over the metal structure, with interior wood panels and exposed metal sheets on the exterior, which covers the volume on the second level. The ground level is covered by carbonized wood panels on the exterior.

The materials used throughout the project were sourced in the local area, having found a particular color of clay bricks that were kept exposed on the interior walls and the carbonized wood that was burnt on site. The construction process considered reusing rainwater, a water treatment plant and the repopulation of plants in the terrain.

As the result of the materials and scale, we were able to bring into the cabin an atmosphere of coziness, combining the feeling of protection from a shelter and the comfort and experience of a more contemporary environment.