Immersed in the wild landscape of southeastern Mexico, Montre House serves as a holiday home for a young couple. Taller de Arquitectura Contextual (TACO) was asked to create a functional and welcome house that would foster reflection and contemplation while connecting its inhabitants with the surrounding wild landscape. An intuitive, functional and simple experience of living, but with great spatial warmth.
The location of the building is defined at the back of the property by issues of privacy and noise control; oriented in such a way that it works with insolation and dominant winds to achieve a comfortable indoor temperature.
The construction is on a platform elevated of the ground level, making it difficult for undesirable animals to access, and facilitating the construction process of the pool, since the terrain is rocky and excavations were not feasible. This was located in the shadow of a pre-existing tree, which is accessed through an open terrace extension of the interior social area. The latter, of double height, contains a kitchenette, a living room, and a staircase to reach the mezzanine that functions as a bedroom. Under the mezzanine, there is a storage closet, a bathroom with an outdoor shower and the exterior staircase leading to the house entrance. The holding platform contains the warehouse and the machine room. Montre House has a footprint of just 42 square meters (452 sqf).
The volumetry is orthogonal and of contrasting materiality. The exterior and interior finish is a rough stucco with artisanal paint based on lime and mineral pigments. For the carpentry, folding doors with operable louvers of regional cedar wood were used, which allow users to control the level of contact between the interior and the exterior.
The interior design is made up of a collection of design pieces in crude tones that incorporate handcrafted processes in their production. The landscape remains mostly in its natural state, where the rocky soil that maintains the building is manifested.
