Hesiodo

Front facade.

Project details

• Project Name: Hesiodo
• Location of Site: Mexico City, Mexico
• Design Team: Alejandro Villarreal, Alfredo Acle, Armando Nino de Rivera, Sugey Ramirez and Cecilia Ramirez Corzo
• Project Type: 13 apartment building complex for loft kind apartments
• Client: Zimbra
• Contractor/s: Zimbra
• Site Area: 480 sq m
• Built-up Area: 2511 sq m
• Cost of Construction: USD 790000
• Date of completion: 2005

Detail of back facade.

Words from the architect

The client brief required to make a distinctive building, with a commercially attractive agenda, and with a well controlled budget.

Interior of an apartment with detail of curtain wall.

This building speaks to us of intermediation. It is an element that seeks to place itself between culture and nature, between openness and introspection, between imposition and dissolution. It speaks of seriousness and at the same time of playfulness, of solidity and fragility, of the forcefulness of weight and the relief of lightness.

We see an orthogonal rigidity mixed with a cascade of spheres that provide not only color and luster, but the reminder that poetry can be embodied in the commonplace.

General staircase with curtain wall.

The selection of materials was limited to three ingredients: one neutral, which provides the needed connection with the urban environment (exposed concrete and gray stucco); one warm, which gives the inhabitant a connection with nature (machiche wood); and one colorful, imbuing the project with flavor and cheerfulness (blown glass and green epoxy flooring).

View from exterior deck.

The building is bounded by a single family home to the west and a convenience store to the east and south. The architectural program includes underground parking for 24 cars, and accommodates 13 apartments in two blocks, one located at the front of the lot (facing north) and the other at the rear (facing south). The two blocks are connected at each level by an area comprising a lobby, stairwells, and the elevator cluster. The rear block has five levels and the front block has four, a condition that allows its rooftop to be used as a terrace for special events. The interior spaces of the apartments were left as free as possible and left unfinished, to allow each occupant to create interiors that suit their needs and likings.

View from exterior deck.

View from exterior deck.

Back facade taken from a nearby building.

Credits

• Text: Alejandro Villarreal
• Photographs: Fernando Cordero