The poetry of the hardness

Published in werk, bauen + wohnen

Architects: Frida Escobedo

Construction use: Apartment building

Year of construction: 2018

Location: Mar Tirreno 86 in Mexico City

02.02.2021

The poetry of the hardness

Architects: Frida Escobedo

Construction use: Apartment building

Year of construction: 2018

Location: Mar Tirreno 86 in Mexico City

Published in werk, bauen + wohnen

02.02.2021

02.02.2021

Published in the December 2020 issue of werk, bauen + wohnen magazine

With the Serpentine Pavilion 2018, the Mexican architect Frida Escobedo, born in 1979, became known in Europe. The theme of the traditional Mexican patio with partially permeable walls – in the Serpentine Pavilion made of stacked roof tiles – also characterises her apartment building at 86 Calle Mar Tirreno in the Mexican capital in a new appearance.

 

Published in the December 2020 issue of werk, bauen + wohnen magazine

 
Tower-high walls hit the narrow pavement at the corner of Mar Tirreno and Mar Negro. The warm grey walls hide the apartment building more than they show it. In the colourful and heterogeneous neighbourhood, the building appears calm and uniform. That is precisely what makes it so striking. All too carelessly, we bring out the camera to capture the stunning effects on the solid curtain of the compact building. We are soon brought back to reality in a kindly manner by district police officers: We find ourselves in Popotla, a neighbourhood north of Mexico City’s city centre, where expensive cameras change hands faster than they should.
 

Architecture for the middle class
With housing prices rapidly rising in the heart of Mexico’s capital, the attractiveness of areas close to the centre is increasing. In the Popotla neighbourhood, prices per square metre for real estate are at least half lower than in the business district of Polanco, a ten-minute drive away. Unlike in the expensive Polanco, the streets in the working-class neighbourhood of Popotla are in poor condition, a tangle of cables obscures the view upwards, noisy metal workshops as well as street vendors loudly advertising their products form the soundscape. The somewhat rough neighbourhood, whose streets are named after seas, is considered relatively safe compared to the rest of Mexico City’s agglomeration.

 

In this scenery, a unique housing project was now to be created by architect Frida Escobedo. In 2017, the real estate developer Desarrolladora WELT invited her to rethink contemporary living. WELT’s target clientele is the growing upper middle class in search of affordable yet unique quality of living. The construction company focuses on high-quality architecture and thus serves a niche market. The challenge with this strategy lies in the fact that the clientele is different from the people already living in the area: it leads to the gentrification of popular neighbourhoods.

 

Patio und Celosia
For her work in Mar Tirreno, Frida Escobedo used themes rooted in Mexican domestic culture – themes she had also explored for her design of the Serpentine Pavilion in London in 2018: the patio and the celosia, a window lattice that filters light and allows ventilation.

 

In Mar Tirreno, the latticework of the Celosia is made of grey-brown concrete bricks, shaped and arranged in such a way that one point faces outwards. The entire façade is covered with concrete bricks – alternating between perforated and solid bricks. Using the simple, modular material, which is widely used in Mexico, especially in the poorer areas, the architect designed her own brick shapes in a warmer colour by adding an aggregate to the concrete. The concrete bricks can be left visible without further surface treatment. The uniform, sixteen-metre-high surface that occupies a street corner hides the windows of the various flats. The only openings in the concrete façade are three overheight apertures that are recognisable as patios of the flats. The ensemble appears monolithic, but by no means monotonous. The subtly rhythmic façade captivates with its very own beauty: the poetry of hardness.

 

Small-scale neighbourhood
On the east façade, which follows the street Mar Tirreno, a few steps lead to the raised entrance. A deep, canyon-like crevice divides the apartment block lengthwise in the middle into two tall, narrow volumes. The large steel entrance portal is flanked by two large ash trees. In front of us is an imposing architectural gorge made of only one material: concrete brick. The high walls with narrow corrugations form the scenery. The flooring made of individual bricks creates its own pattern. Looking up, you may feel small, but the view of the sky, framed by the jagged outlines of the walls, is unique.

 

The narrow, corridor-like inner courtyard mediates the transition between the public space and the semi-public space of the house community. Here, architect Escobedo reformulates the traditional working-class housing typology, the vecindad – neighbourhood. This communal housing unit evolved from the Spanish courtyard building of Mexico’s conquistadors, in which flats are arranged on one or both sides of a common patio, which is the main entrance. The patio is the beating heart, serving as an access area, the supply of light and air, and the extension of the living space for the tiny flats. This is where people cook, wash, play and care for each other. The residents identify with their vecindad. This form of housing is still very common today in the popular residential areas of Mexico City.

 

Vicinity and intimacy
Compared to the traditional vecindad, the inward-facing structure in Mar Tirreno is much less lively. Here, it is above all a beautiful but quiet space that provides access to the flats. The residential complex is a small world in itself, consisting of nine flats, rooms for the security staff and an underground garage. The maisonettes are offset from each other in both floor plan and section to achieve the best natural lighting and privacy.


The central element is the private loggias with two-storey window fronts, which are surrounded by the living space on three sides and also provide light to the interior. The view into the flats and the private loggias is prevented by their chessboard-like arrangement and the concrete grid of the celosia. The direct opposite is always a rhythmic wall. The result is a generously dimensioned outdoor space that can be used as an extension of the private living space, as is common in Mexico City due to the mild climate.


Especially in such a bustling city, such a sheltered outdoor space is valuable. The feeling of having one’s own little house with outdoor space in a beautiful neighbourhood could be seen as the right strategy to contain the regular urban escape of many capital citizens at the weekend. Playing with the degrees of intimacy and permeability, hiding and making visible, shelter and outlook stems from a personal preference of Frida Escobedo. Time also always plays a role for her. The framed space between the houses filters the light as if the building were a large sundial. We literally feel time passing, sheltered in a place that keeps the colourful chaos of Mexico City at bay.