This Mexican retreat’s brick curves are constructed round its forest setting

A Mexican retreat, about 40 minutes west of the heaving megalopolis of Mexico Metropolis, brings sand-coloured brick curves right into a dense pine forest flanked by a bustling freeway. The construction, a household residence titled Casa Jajalpa, designed by the Mexican follow Lanza atelier (newly introduced as architects of the Serpentine Pavilion 2026) turns a blind wall to the infinite sprawl of town, opting as a substitute to embrace the native panorama by domesticating a sliver of the forest.

Step inside this brick-clad Mexican retreat

The conceptual power and readability which have come to characterise the rising studio’s work, which ranges from furnishings to ephemeral pavilions and museum exhibition design, is current within the residence’s format – one gestural stroke materialises because the curved wall that envelops the in any other case orthogonal undertaking.

‘After we first approached the positioning, we seen a clearing at its centre, the place a dramatic, green-tinged gentle seeped by the timber through the day,’ remembers Isabel Abascal, who based Lanza atelier in Mexico Metropolis in 2015, alongside her accomplice and co-director, Alessandro Arienzo. This verdant glow grew to become the design’s guideline. ‘From there, our premise was clear,’ says Abascal. ‘The clearing could be left largely intact, the home organised round it, and every part related by a wall that bends across the present vegetation.’

The shoppers, a household of 4, sought a retreat from metropolis life inside a spacious residence intimately related to nature, and gave the studio free rein over the design. 5 bedrooms and a studio house are present in the primary quantity. Throughout from it, a visitor space with a bar, a fitness center and two visitor bedrooms connects to the home by a slender hallway, which provides glimpses of the clearing by a brick lattice wall.

Regardless of the undertaking’s resolute introversion, the encircling forest remains to be an imposing presence. Home windows body summary fragments of the panorama, whereas overhead openings seize parts of the towering pines, and invite in daylight to heat up the home. ‘Understanding how the solar would journey by the home was a really primary consideration,’ says Arienzo, ‘as a result of it’s another ingredient that establishes a connection to the altering panorama.’

The sense of proximity with nature that Arienzo describes is heightened by the fabric qualities of the house. That includes a curved concrete slab roof and Encino wooden flooring, the construction was constructed fully with tabique blanco, a light-weight brick produced within the close by state of Puebla. Resulting from their porosity, the exterior-facing bricks set up a symbiotic relationship with the pure setting, buying a greenish hue when rain abounds, and turning into extra golden through the dry season.