Pepe Ramírez designed a home with a program that includes domestic spaces accompanied by open gardens, a vegetable garden, and interior vegetation integrated into everyday life, as well as a study-library designed to preserve his documentary and professional collection.
The sensorial treatment of the home was an important aspect: light and shadows generate atmospheres of contemplation, while the vegetation was arranged to actively participate in interior life. Its colors and its relationship with the context are respectful, avoiding overpowering and seeking to blend in with the surroundings. The entrance presents a path that culminates in an exterior garden as a visual culmination, evoking Barragan's poetic style. Facing the street, the façade is discreet, silent, but with a clear volume.
In terms of construction, the house uses natural materials that revive local traditions. The structure, made of reinforced concrete with a plank finish, responds to a sober approach, where volumetric solidity supports transitional spaces between interior and exterior. Plastering and troweling allow for more artisanal finishes, which favors the combination of constructive simplicity, warmth, and closeness in its formal image.
Casa Eréndira by Pepe Ramírez. Photograph by Cesar Belio.
Project description by Pepe Ramírez Arquitectos
Located in a traditional neighbourhood, on a narrow plot measuring 10 meters wide by 25 meters deep, Casa Eréndira was conceived for two women: mother and daughter. Lovers of Mexican culture, natural materials, lush vegetation, and the warmth of artisanal craftsmanship characteristic of the towns of Michoacán, they envisioned a home that would embody these values both in spirit and in materiality.
The project responds to this vision with open gardens designed to host a vegetable patch, indoor greenery that accompanies everyday life, and an atmosphere where light and shadow evoke a sense of mysticism. Complementing these spaces is a studio-library, conceived as a container for their professional and documentary collection.
At Casa Eréndira, true luxury lies in the experience of space itself: in the changing light, the play of shadows, the vegetation breathing alongside the architecture, and the respectful dialogue with its context. The house does not aim to impose or stand out, but rather to integrate and blend into its surroundings. The use of natural materials and gardens that draw from the site’s native flora becomes the guiding principle to create a place of tranquility, freedom, and harmony.
From the moment of entry, the design seeks to make the interior journey the central experience: a path that culminates in an exterior garden as a visual focal point, recalling the spatial poetics of Luis Barragán’s Casa-Estudio. Toward the street, the façade remains discreet and quiet, yet subtly reveals the strength of its volumetry—assertive without being ostentatious.
