Project: Ro House
Architects: Alexanderson Arquitectos
Location: Guadalajara, Mexico
Photographs by: Courtesy of Alexanderson Arquitectos
Ro House by Alexanderson Arquitectos
Alexanderson Arquitectos have completed the Ro House project in a gated community in Guadalajara, Mexico. This beautiful modern dwelling is set on a plot with special regulations that creates a setback in a few areas of the design but the end result is a two-story home where the upper level is actually just slightly above street level and the lower level is underneath, opening up to a beautifully landscaped backyard.
The lot is located in a gated community with special regulations, capriciously, irregular and square, it generates setback areas on all sides, allowing free circulation and the reinterpretation of the courtyard garden idea.
The topographic characteristics at the edge of a ravine, along with the architectural program allow to develop a distribution that clearly separates the public and private program.
The house is designed in two levels. The upper level (access level) rises 60 cm from the street level giving the feeling of airiness and spaciousness. This small gesture achieves the façade to be perceived as a single level, highlighting the horizontality and length of the lot.
At this access level are the services, garages, painting studio and a terrace. The materiality of this body, mostly made of exposed brick, confirms on the facades this separation between public – private; through the arrangement of this brick, lattice walls are achieved, permeating the passage of light, revealing different views and different atmospheres.
On the ground floor are the bedrooms, lounge, kitchen, TV studio, which located around a central garden, frame the existing interior-exterior relationship in all spaces. This garden takes advantage of a shift in the geometry of the project to merge with the ravine and leads to circulation areas, causing this ongoing dialogue with nature.
