Casa Roma by BRAG Arquitectos is a 10-level residential building on Avenida Chapultepec in Mexico City, combining compact loft apartments, shared domestic programs, and a faceted perforated metal facade that filters privacy, noise, and views within a dense metropolitan corridor between Roma Norte and Juarez.
Casa Roma Technical Information
- Architects: BRAG Arquitectos
- Location: Avenida Chapultepec, Roma Norte / Juárez, Mexico City, Mexico
- Gross Area: 1,700 m2 | 18,299 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years: 2025
- Photographs: © Zaickz Moz
Casa Roma was conceived as a compact residential structure whose private interiors open to shared programs and to the city through a facade that filters light, views, noise, and privacy.
– BRAG Arquitectos
Urban Insertion on Avenida Chapultepec
Casa Roma occupies a 177.6 m2 plot on Avenida Chapultepec, a corridor where Roma Norte and Juarez meet through heavy traffic, pedestrian movement, transit infrastructure, nightlife, and short-term occupation. Rather than treating the site as a quiet residential enclave, the project accepts the intensity of its surroundings and translates the narrow parcel into vertical density. Its 10 levels concentrate small apartments and shared amenities within a slender urban volume that participates in the metropolitan scale of the avenue.
The ground floor serves as a threshold between the street’s speed and the building’s controlled interior. A lobby, commercial frontage, and shared services maintain activity at the sidewalk level, limiting the condition of an inactive residential plinth. This is particularly relevant along a wide, trafficked avenue where safety depends not only on lighting and access control but also on the presence of occupied edges throughout the day and evening.
The proximity to Glorieta de los Insurgentes situates the building within a changing residential economy shaped by mobility and temporary habitation. Casa Roma does not propose the apartment as an isolated domestic unit, but as a base for inhabiting the city. This position gives the project an urban clarity, while also raising broader questions about the pressure that short- and mid-term residential models exert on central neighborhoods with established social and cultural identities.
Compact Living and Shared Domestic Programs
The apartments range from 35 to 45 m2 and adopt a loft configuration in which kitchen, bathroom, storage, sleeping, and living areas are compressed into a continuous interior. The arrangement depends on built-in furniture and flexible occupation rather than spatial separation. A fold-down bed, integrated storage walls, compact kitchens, and combined living areas allow each unit to serve multiple daily scenarios without increasing its footprint.
This degree of compression is balanced by the displacement of service and leisure functions into collective areas. Laundry facilities, pet-washing areas, and the roof garden reduce the need for private domestic infrastructure while encouraging encounters among residents. The strategy reflects a familiar shift in dense housing: private space is minimized, and shared space assumes functions that once belonged to individual apartments. Its success depends on the quality, maintenance, and accessibility of those shared areas, since compact units become less resilient when collective spaces are poorly managed.
The interior palette is deliberately restrained. SPC wood-look flooring, white plastered walls, MDF storage systems, and black metal details create a durable and legible framework for frequent use. The warm wood tones moderate the efficiency of the layouts, while the neutral surfaces leave room for different modes of occupation. In architectural terms, the interiors operate less through decorative expression than through the precise placement of storage, furniture, and thresholds that make a limited floor area usable.
The Faceted Facade as Urban Filter
The street elevation is the most explicit architectural device of the project. A three-dimensional grid of triangular and diamond geometries forms a faceted layer of white perforated metal panels, semi-open terraces, glass balustrades, and planted edges. This screen gives depth to a narrow building face, transforming the facade from a flat boundary into an inhabitable buffer between the apartments and Avenida Chapultepec.
Its environmental role is tied to privacy, acoustics, and visual mediation. Behind the perforated panels and acoustic glazing, the apartments remain connected to the city without being fully exposed to it. The circular perforations fragment views toward the avenue and skyline, while the planted balconies soften the hard geometry of the metal frame. At night, interior light passes through the screen, revealing the depth of the buffer and the alternating rhythm of solid, void, and occupation.
The folded geometry also distinguishes the building from the orthogonal language of its neighbors, which include flat glazed offices and more conventional residential blocks. This contrast is not only formal. By regulating its own visual complexity through a consistent geometric system, the facade resists becoming another layer of urban noise. Its value lies in the tension between movement and order, using repetition to control a surface that might otherwise become merely graphic.
Section, Structure, and Environmental Mediation
The section responds to different urban pressures on the front and rear of the site. Toward Avenida Chapultepec, the building presents a continuous screened elevation. Toward the adjacent property, the rear volume steps inward and upward, creating terraces that improve daylight, outward views, and the quality of the units facing away from the main avenue. The stepped section prevents the rear apartments from becoming residual spaces and gives them access to planted outdoor rooms with glass balustrades and sliding openings.
The structural strategy reflects the specific risks of building in Mexico City. An existing six-story structure was removed after studies determined that its foundation could not support the new program. The replacement system uses 21 piles reaching depths of 44 meters, anchoring the building within one of the city’s most demanding seismic contexts. This decision places the project within a necessary culture of structural caution, where density cannot be separated from soil behavior, foundation depth, and long-term safety.
At the top of the building, the roof garden extends the domestic program into a shared elevated landscape. Perimeter planting frames views toward Paseo de la Reforma, while lounge areas, a grill bar, and pet-friendly zones continue the logic of collective amenities established at lower levels. The use of terrazzo at the bar recalls a material associated with mid-century residential interiors in the area, linking the roof to a local domestic memory rather than treating it as a generic amenity deck. Rainwater collection further mediates the building’s relationship with municipal infrastructure, adding an environmental function to a project otherwise defined by density, compact living, and urban exposure.
About BRAG Arquitectos
BRAG Arquitectos is an architecture firm working in Mexico City. Its work focuses on creating iconic buildings for the city, with projects defined by their aesthetic presence, market functionality, and an understanding of the social dynamics of one of the world’s largest metropolises.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Structural engineers: INESCO
- Client: GDC Desarrollos
- Design team: Cristian Aguilar, Sergio Cruz, Victor Buendia;
- Soil studies: DMC Ingenieria;
- Photography: Zaickz Moz | Zaickz Studio
