Date: 2018-2019
Location: Puebla, Pue.
Area: 149.5 m2
Design: Luis Moctezuma
Project Partner: Sonia López Domínguez
Collaborators: Abdiel Cervantes, Fernando Campos, Cuauhtémoc Melchor
Team: Adolfo Flores, Rubén Flores, Magali Muñoz, Sai Sánchez, Enrique Aguilar
Construction: Luis Moctezuma and Cuauhtémoc Melchor
This house was planned to be marketed, but with the intention of rethinking the scheme used in these typologies, where most of the projects, when there are any, attend to real estate market conditions and monetary interests. The intention was to design a home for the real estate market that managed to provide a higher level of habitability than usual, where the inhabitant is the objective to be satisfied before any other aspect. So the concept of CASA NARANJOS is based on comfort, understanding that to achieve this, function, space maximization and the spatial atmosphere must be considered. As this is achieved, the well-being of the inhabitant will be strengthened.
Comfort. Definition: Material conditions that provide well-being or comfort. Loan of the English confort and this of the French conforter ‘strengthen, consolidate’. In English the term has gone from the moral sense to designate a physical and material state and, by metonymy, the material conditions that allow us to enjoy this state. It is then considered that in order to achieve a comfortable design, it is necessary to begin by giving a satisfactory solution to material conditions belonging to basic and ordinary issues, since it is in the simplicity of things that the genuine solution of problems lies.
Function. Most of the time in the “HOUSES OF SALE” the spaces do not work in the best possible way, they are disjointed or interfere with each other, the operating diagram is just a myth and anthropometry dies on the first step. For a house that is marketed there is no client, we know, but we can imagine living in those spaces, waking up in the main room or reading in the living room at sunset, so that the house must first of all be really useful to the inhabitant. Space optimization. They say that “everything fits in a jar knowing how to accommodate it”, in effect, the program of needs of a project can be organized in an optimal way knowing how to manage the space.
Thinking of a typical medium-interest selling house Where are the stairs located? Regularly in front of the ground floor facade and loaded to the right or left. Where is the master bedroom located? Most of them are on the upper floor, in front of the façade on the space that is obligatorily used as a garage.
These are usually the standardized responses that are given, without anything else is important to the design of a medium-interest home that will be destined to form part of the real estate market. This means the dehumanization of architecture, of space, and that is really the problem that must be resolved.
No one can repeat the same action over and over again expecting a different reaction, so let’s reorganize our ideas and reorganize the spaces that make up the house to be designed, taking into consideration the maximum use of space (understood in m2) in relation to the layout and interaction of spaces (understanding their use and destination).
The atmosphere of space. I once read the phrase “true luxury is in space,” as I remember it was the architect Ricardo Legorreta who said it. Who has not seen these words come true on the occasions when he visits the works of not only famous architects but of those professional architects committed to the architectural task. What more adornment do the walls need than light on your skin?
It is not that an “iris Green” type marble does not come in handy in the hall, but what if the media does not allow such luxuries? Is there no luxury for a home without the means? Yes, of course, there is a luxury and it is found in the management of space, light, textures, and form. The handling of these elements translates into an atmosphere full of comfort and plastic richness.
These are the 3 points that provide support for the development of the CASA NARANJOS project, which has the mission of vindicating the HOUSE FOR SALE concept, showing that regardless of the level of the home that is being worked on, there are always options for making architecture.
