Made to accompany life and the passing of time, Casa El Espino opens to the landscape without losing its composure, framing the mountains and lake through measured openings.
Casa El Espino appears as a canopy, sitting between a jungle and a pine forest in the Valle de Bravo, México. This relationship to land places the single-level home within a duality of warm and dry climates, responding to the gentle slope it is placed on through subtle elevation shifts.
Soler Orozco Arquitectos (SOA) and DIRECCIÓN come together at the intersection of architecture and interiors. Their shared understanding of the site’s colours, views and vegetation supports the built form to endure and belong to its context. Location scouting was guided by the client’s desire for a “one story house that hinted at a barn,” which, according to SOA co-founder Juan Soler, ensured that “basic traditional geometry stuck throughout all stages of the design process, too.”
However, the project went through an important change when “elements such as the guest bedrooms and the grounds caretaker’s quarters were required to be reconfigured and the building’s position had to be adjusted,” Alan Orozco, who co-founded the studio alongside Sole, adds. This shift in the home’s architectural intent extended to integrating a large water reservoir, requiring the team to continually adapt to site conditions.
