Casa Pedregal designed by Studio Patricia Meneses, led by the architect that bears her name, is located on one of the gentle slopes of the city of San Luis de Potosí, in central Mexico. The position of the plot gives the house a privileged position with views over the city, allowing it to emerge from the hustle and bustle of the city and dialogue with the image of the majestic forest that once existed in this place.

With a plot of rectangular geometry, the house establishes a sensitive dialogue with the land and seems to grow among the rocks in a fragmented way through different pavilions that make up a unique single-family home.
The design proposed by Patricia Meneses avoids the confrontation with the territory and is proposed from an attitude of dialogue with nature. Taking the idea of ​​creating a plant waterfall, the project pays attention to light, to the way in which rainwater flows from the top of the hillside and treats the house as a connecting link between the mountains and the city.

The compact volumetry of the neighboring houses, in the Meneses project, is rearticulated in a program of several pavilions that rise in an ascending path respecting the topography of the land, generating a conversation with a garden made up of natural and diverse vegetation, a hybridization organic with the territory.

Circulation stands out as one of the central ideas of this work. Through a symbolic staircase, the circulation generates various contemplation spaces connecting all the rooms or pavilions of a considerable height, with doors and windows that allow to absorb, as part of the interior space, the imposing views of the city.

Casa Pedregal by Studio Patricia Meneses. Photograph by Rodrigo Calzada / Albers studio
 

Description of project by Studio Patricia Meneses

In the middle of a rocky, desert landscape, where once there was a forest, a wide slope rises connecting with the great lung of the city.

Casa Pedregal emerges from the rocks, a living space composed of volumes scattered across the landscape, a bridging space between the urban forest and the slopes of the city.

The project seeks to give continuity to this great natural fabric and expand towards the mountains, from which the broad horizon of the entire city can be contemplated.

Intense skies, violet sunsets and desert ochers envelop the views of the house from all its spaces.

A series of prisms rise above the territory, subtly barely touching the natural terrain, giving way to the creation of a large garden that results from the topographic continuity of the mountain, allowing the natural course of water and a symbiosis with the spontaneous vegetation.

The project is structured around the large rock formations that dominate the terrain. Elevated walkways branch off from the backbone of the project, a central walkway rises along the territory along more than ten meters high, introducing us to a series of prisms detached from the earth that house the living spaces of the house.

The ascent route, suspends you above the vegetation, a garden created to envelop the daily paths, converting them, turning the route into a space of transition and contemplation, returning the individual to his or her original state of connection with nature.

The landscape itself becomes a habitable space. The crossing of winds, the abundant vegetation that filters the light and the presence of water, generate a micro climate, humid and green in contrast to the arid and dry context.

A large tree frames the access, raising its leaves, which in a cadence, fossilizes its passage in the envelope of the upper space, from which the individual is given to inhabit from the heights, his personal refuge.

More information

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Architects
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Project team
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Sergio Castillo, Gabriel Ramírez, Larissa Aguilar, Luz Elena García, Raúl Iván Vidalés, Marcela Metlich, Daniel Meneses.
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Area
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Plot.- 350 sqm.
GFA.- 165 sqm.
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Dates
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December, 2021.
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Location
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San Luis Potosí, Mexico.
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Photography
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Rodrigo Calzada / Albers studio.
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Patricia Meneses. San Luis Potosí, Mexico, 1976. Mexican architect for the ETS Arquitectura de Barcelona, ​​she founded her architecture firm in Barcelona, Studio Patricia Meneses, with the intention of exploring the relationship between art and function, integrating disciplines such as architecture, design, sculpture and installation. Studio Patricia Meneses is a space where young architects reflect, promote, investigate and act in different fields of contemporary expression.

With her architecture firm, she has developed a wide variety of projects in various countries such as Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, the United States, Senegal, Mexico, Taiwan, among others, in which there are architectural, artistic, urban, landscape, creation of objects, exhibition design, scenography and costumes in which he researches and experiments with new ways of relating space, individual and society.

Her work has been awarded on multiple occasions by international institutions, among which the Design Vanguard Award, chosen among the Ten Young Architects of the World by the Architectural Record, New York; the Young Architects Forum Award by The Architects League of New York; two honorable mentions at AR Awards by Architectural Review, London; Special Award New Generation, Contract World Award Germany; the Young Architects of Spain Prize awarded by the Architects' Association of Catalonia, as well as the National Young Injuve Art Prize in the category of Architecture awarded by the Ministry of Culture of Spain, among many others. The extensive production of her projects has been recognized, exhibited and presented in various spaces around the world, such as the Royal Institute of British Architects London, the Architekturzentrum Vienna, the University of Alcalá de Henares, Spain, The Architects League of New York, Cittadella dei Musei, Università di Cagliari, Italy, the College of Architects of Catalonia, Spain, University of Westminster, London, La Biennale Internationale de design Saint Etienne, France, Arkitekternes Hus, Copenhagen, Denmark and 2010 Taipei Expo among many others. Her work has been published in the main international magazines and books, specialized in architecture and art.
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Published on: February 27, 2022
Cite: "A habitable landscape, metamorphosis of housing. Casa Pedregal by Studio Patricia Meneses" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/a-habitable-landscape-metamorphosis-housing-casa-pedregal-studio-patricia-meneses> ISSN 1139-6415
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