House in Halapa, Mexico by Lopez Gonzalez Studio

Project: House in Halapa Architects: Lopez Gonzalez Studio Location: Halapa, Mexico Area: 5,683 sq ft Year: 2021 Photography by: César Béjar Studio, Rodrigo Chapa

House in Halapa by Lopez Gonzalez Studio

The "House in Halapa" by Lopez Gonzalez Studio harmoniously integrates with its natural surroundings. The dark facade resembles a stone structure, while the interior spaces create a play of light and shadow. Terraces and windows establish a symbiotic relationship with the abundance of vegetation. Wooden accents, from beams to furniture, evoke warmth and a sense of durability. The light pine tone combines with the colors of the landscape, while red frames create a vibrant contrasting solution. The design philosophy respects time, allowing the house to develop alongside nature.

Representing a home for a growing family, the house offers a living format organized around a continuous dialogue with the surrounding landscape. The dark facade gives it a solid structure, simultaneously reminding of the possibility of a house carved within a stone form. Some architectural solutions enhance this perception, such as the division of the house volumes suggesting a crack-like shape or windows appearing randomly but with rhythmic balance across different parts of the walls. Moreover, the internal journey offers a play of changing light and shadow: paths open and close, compress and expand, merging into open spaces that provide fresh air and privacy.

Terraces and windows allow creating a constant dynamism with the extensive vegetation surrounding the plot. In the house's ecosystem, plants become the main characters establishing a symbiotic relationship similar to the relationships between moss or amate and stone. Various-sized and shaped windows become openings surrounding natural elements, prompting viewers to reflect on the green hue while illuminating all living spaces. At the same time, these windows blur the boundary between inside and outside, creating a feeling of expansion. Outside, overcoming the vegetation that surrounds and hides the building like a lost treasure in the trunk of a tree, windows offer fleeting stolen glimpses into life—just fragments of what happens there every day. In the evening, the black house disappears in darkness. Only small slits of light reveal a series of everyday scenes.

When viewed from the outside, stone wall tones and green foliage stand out; inside, the house is filled with wood that takes on an important role. It appears in beams, bookshelves, cabinets or furniture where daily life will unfold: chair, table, bed, door. In addition to the warmth of place, using wood establishes another dialogue with the landscape. Pine again reminds that it is precisely the earth that should provide the key to a sturdy home rooted in territory. Its light tone combines with the black facade, green vegetation and red frames as the strongest colors. The restrained presence of the latter, red, offers a vibrant contrast similar to a flower, attempting to find a balanced palette capable of dissolving into the surrounding environment.

The site offers an idea of housing based on the characteristics, conditions and resources of the territory. Similarly, here architecture is conceived to allow time to perform its work on the built terrain: plants will grow, walls become moist and mossy, volumes will increasingly conform to the landscape. This is a philosophy of construction in which work does not end (it only begins) at the moment when the house starts to live.

–Lopez Gonzalez Studio