Mexico City based architects AS/D Asociación de Diseño designed a minimalist weekend house as a summer retreat divided in four separate volumes arranged around a central courtyard.
Photography © Rafael Gamo
Description from AS/D Asociación de Diseño:
“This weekend house located in the Jurica Campestre community seeks to redefine the concept of a retreat home by defragmenting its core program in 4 main volumes. The house is conceived as a central house and 3 independent suites or volumes. This configuration of modules makes the house central core a plaza where one can enjoy a variety of outdoor activities. These main spaces of the house create an interior-exterior relationship where the interior is well connected to nature and its surroundings, creating this way its own context.
The house form the beginning was placed on a 5m by 5m grid and this helped position and have flexibility during the creative process where one could reconfigure the relationship between volumes. The name Casa 4.1.4 derived from its massing consisting of one central house, 4 main volumes, one central plaza and four plazas or patios.
The project takes a starting point by placing the 4 components of the house on the site. The main house of approximately 155 sq.meters, is lived from a central courtyard that acts as a distribution of program such as kitchen living, dining, and main bedroom, as well as filters light to all the public areas. The suites (cubes) of just 25 sq.meters makes a playful shadow and depth of field and creates its own context by being placed around the central plaza, these rooms allocate a bedroom, a bath, dressing room, panty-coffee space so they can operate independently form the house and provide privacy.
These volumes having unobstructed views generate intimacy among them. This relationship between architecture and landscape results in a field of vegetation diversity.”
