- Project: House Río
- Architect: LABarq
- Location: Mexico, Santiago de Querétaro
- Year: 2025
- Area: 559 m2
- Photography: Ariadna Polo
House Río by LABarq sits on a trapezoidal lot in Santiago de Querétaro and uses a strategic V-shaped plan to orient daily life toward a protected courtyard and the rear garden. The architecture balances urban privacy with luminous openness, framing long views while choreographing movement between social and private realms.
A V-Shaped Residence Oriented Toward Nature
The plan converges toward the landscape, forming a central courtyard that becomes the nucleus of domestic life. While the street façade remains measured and introverted, the garden side dissolves into light, views, and generous indoor–outdoor connections.
Spatial Organization & Architectural Strategy
LABarq organizes the home into two wings that open onto the courtyard:
- Social wing: living, dining, mezzanine, and an office with independent access—extending to the pool and covered terrace.
- Private wing: service core, circulation, bedrooms, and shared bathroom below; upper level hosts the primary suite and secondary bedrooms with controlled outlooks.
Between them, the courtyard acts as the sheltered outdoor room linking interior flows and framing daily rituals.
Structure, Transparency & Lightness
A clear structural language of steel columns, plates, and tension rods enables long spans and a subtly floating social wing that lifts off the ground. This lightness enhances visual continuity across the garden, while the bedroom volumes counterbalance with measured transparency and shade control.
Living Experience: Flow & Atmosphere
Arrival sequences frame the courtyard immediately, drawing the eye through layered volumes. Double-height spaces link to a mezzanine and terrace, while evening lighting warms the steel rhythm and stone surfaces, turning the house into a quiet beacon against the landscape.
Social Core: Living, Dining, Gallery
The open-plan living and dining rooms align to the courtyard edge, with tall glazing that captures shifting light. A gallery-like corridor becomes a daily promenade alongside the garden, strengthening the home’s sense of continuity.
Kitchen & Terrace: Indoor–Outdoor Everyday
The kitchen anchors family life with a generous island and direct access to a shaded terrace. Sliding doors create a seamless threshold for cooking, dining, and lounging across seasons.
Retreats & Rituals
Private spaces are tuned for calm—stone, wood, and filtered light shaping an atmosphere of repose. An outdoor stone bathtub nestles within a small courtyard, turning daily routines into landscape rituals.
Materials & Landscape Integration
A warm, regional palette is deployed with precision: Santo Tomás marble and walnut veneer establish a tactile baseline; ribbed wood panels articulate planes and screens; and dry gardens with native plantings stabilize the site while reducing maintenance.
Drawings
Plans and elevations reveal the V-shaped strategy and sectional links that choreograph views, light, and circulation between the two wings and the central courtyard.
