Casa en Avándaro arranges four dense volumes and a fully glazed communal hall along a steep, forested slope in Valle de Bravo. A raised concrete plinth, clay-tile roofs for rainwater harvesting, and a central garden that preserves existing pines and oaks tie the domestic program to hydrology, light, and the mature canopy.
Casa en Avándaro Technical Information
- Architects: ESTUDIO Ignacio Urquiza Ana Paula de Alba
- Location: Valle de Bravo, Estado de México, Mexico
- Gross Area: 537 m2 | 5,780 Sq. Ft.
- Completion Year: 2024
- Photographs: © Rafael Gamo
We allowed the slope and longstanding trees to define both plan and section. Dense volumes hold the ground while a light canopy gathers everyday life around the hearth and the forest.
– Ignacio Urquiza
Terrain-Led Siting and Light
The house aligns its long side with the fall of the terrain and the order of mature pines and oaks. The main façade faces north toward the stream, favoring even daylight for collective spaces. Across the four volumes, the plan creates a central void that preserves existing trees and draws sunlight from the south to warm interiors throughout the day. This internal garden is not an afterthought but a climatic device that tempers air and creates a layered sequence from forest to house.
Hydrological reasoning underpins the siting. Surface water moves downslope to the ravine while pitched clay-tile roofs collect rainfall for storage and reuse. A continuous exposed-concrete plinth lifts the timber and masonry above ground, preventing splash and capillary rise and creating a ventilated buffer that reduces moisture transfer in a humid setting. The combination of roof geometry and elevated base treats rain and runoff as structuring forces rather than problems to be concealed.
Daylight is modulated by orientation and aperture control. Northern glazing washes the living hall and dining area with diffuse light, limiting glare on finishes and keeping solar gain low. In the closed volumes, windows are smaller and selectively placed, framing specific views and supporting privacy for sleeping and study. This contrast between open northern exposure and calibrated openings produces a clear gradient from public to private, from view to refuge.
Solids and Canopy: Structural and Spatial Typology
A succinct diagram organizes four solid blocks around a transparent living hall. Three blocks and the chimney serve as supports for a lightweight concrete roof resting on steel beams, establishing a legible relationship between mass and canopy. The collective room below the roof reads as an exterior space within the plan: glass on all sides extends sightlines to the forest and courtyard, while the concrete cover provides shade and shelter.
The solids do the heavy lifting in terms of structure and the environment. Their mass stabilizes the canopy, braces the plan, and buffers acoustics for the private program within. Openings are calibrated by use and orientation, allowing the volumes to remain cool and calm while maintaining a connection to the site. The chimney, conceived as a vertical anchor and heat source, participates in the structural system and centers domestic life in the open hall.
Between these elements, the inter-volume courtyard and the glazed hall operate as porous connectors. Planting and existing trunks pass through the field of view, bringing the landscape into the core of the plan without exposing the private rooms. The result is a system in which the heavy components hold ground and climate, and the light cover collects daily activity, creating layered thresholds rather than a single inside-outside line.
Programmatic Clarity and Adaptive Thresholds
Program is distributed across the four volumes to balance proximity and separation. One block contains two mirrored bedrooms; another houses a family or TV room that can convert to sleeping. A third stacks a kitchen at grade, a study on the middle level, and the main bedroom above, establishing a vertical sequence that gives the primary suite distance and outlook. The fourth, detached block concentrates services, mechanical equipment, and parking, keeping noise and infrastructure off the main floor.
The living and dining space sits at the center beneath the canopy. A floor-to-ceiling assembly 9.6 meters wide by 3.6 meters high divides into four sliding panels that pocket into an adjacent volume. When open, the hall becomes a roofed terrace with continuous cross ventilation, eliminating the need to duplicate exterior and interior living rooms. This move consolidates spatial and material resources while maintaining strong climatic performance.
Secondary transparent rooms reinforce direct connections. A children’s playroom with full-height glazing opens directly to the garden and connects to the family room, allowing supervision across the courtyard without sacrificing acoustic separation. Above, the flat roof over the communal hall forms a terrace accessible from the three family bedrooms, placing daily routines in immediate contact with the canopy and extending the project’s sectional life into the trees.
Tectonics, Material Palette, and Passive Performance
The base is an exposed-concrete socle that both founds and insulates the house from damp ground. Above it, brick walls finished with local stucco provide thermal mass suited to diurnal swings in a temperate, humid forest. Pitched roofs with flat clay tiles shed heavy rain and feed collection systems, while deep eaves protect openings and limit splash-back to the walls.
The canopy over the glazed hall is a lightweight concrete slab spanning steel beams between the solids and the chimney. Its flat top becomes a terrace, clarifying the reading of separate heavy “houses” and a shared, light cover. This assembly produces long, column-free edges for operable glazing and supports the seasonal transformation of the main room from enclosed hall to open pavilion.
Material choices foreground the landscape and aid comfort. Stained and natural oak, black marble, and volcanic stone provide tactile density at floors, hearths, and work surfaces. Textiles in natural wool and linen, together with locally woven palm, soften acoustics and reduce glare against neutral wall finishes. Lighting is kept low and ambient, using warm sources to articulate the volumes and canopy without overpowering night views of the garden and the surrounding forest.
About ESTUDIO Ignacio Urquiza Ana Paula de Alba
Based in Mexico, ESTUDIO Ignacio Urquiza Ana Paula de Alba was founded by architects Ana Paula de Alba and Ignacio Urquiza. The studio embraces a sensitive architectural approach that respects natural context, light, and materiality. Their work reflects a balance between solid structures and delicate spatial experiences, emphasizing climatic performance, typological clarity, and a deep connection between built form and landscape.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Architects: Ana Paula de Alba e Ignacio Urquiza
- Design Team: Michela Lostia di Santa Sofia, Anet Carmona, Ana Laura Ochoa, Adán Salazar, Valeria González, Miguel Ángel Vega
- Landscape designers: Genfor Landscaping, Tania Eguiluz
- Interior design: Ana Paula de Alba
- Furniture: Ana Paula de Alba, Rituales Contemporáneos, Perch, Allied Maker
- Photographer: Rafael Gamo
