type: private residence extension, landscaping
location: Todos Santos, BCS, Mexico
year: 2013
client: Chris Jaksa
status: in construction
project team: a10studio: Mariano Arias-Diez

We were asked to generate new areas for an existing house with a very restricted budget:
Terrace, exterior living room, exterior dinning area, exercise area/gym, a studio, and a scenic overlook.

To link this requirements we based our proposal in the use of vernacular materials such as local stones, dirt, natural light, water, the sound of waves, the thoughts and memory… The proposal materialize by using only 3 rammed earth walls and 2 latticed walls to define all the required new areas.

We seek for emotion and authenticity in the proposal by the use of traditional and vernacular materials. The physical intimacy of proximity to the earth by the use of site's dirt to build the project walls tries to Reveal the spirituality of the elementary matter and the universality of vernacular materials, supported and expressed through the silence of the forms.

"In a world swamped with digital images, the return to the physical, tactile humility of primary materials becomes a pilgrimage to the essential sources of construction, a path of knowledge that drains the superfluous and elevates through descent."
-Luis Fernandez-Galiano