CASA CAMELIA | DCPP Arquitectos

Camelia is a remodeling and reconfiguration project of a house in the neighborhood of San Ángel, south of Mexico City. The existing house had three levels, no space for parking, the spaces were set based on load-bearing walls, giving the house a sense of tightness as well as very little natural light. The remodeling concept came from the idea of rethinking horizontal and vertical circulations as linking elements. Thus trying to generate greater amplitude in all spaces, as well as to provide natural light at different levels giving a sense of lightness and movement to the entire house. We opted to leave the facade untouched, we wanted the intervention just occur on the inside respecting the original style of the house to the outside. The only thing we added was a basement to create parking space. On the interior a vertical drilling was done in all the levels of the house where we would place a staircase as the linking element for circulations. This new staircase ordered the spaces around it and allowed natural light to filter into the house. This staircase was conceptualized as a sculptural element inserted within an existing structure. We wanted to be very clear about the difference between the old and the new intervention, being this conceived as a separated single element. In contrast to the white of the existing walls, the element of the staircase was proposed as a black metal sculpture separated from the existing structure, this generates the illusion of a floating staircase. In the backside of the staircase, a reflective sheet was proposed so it doubles the space and transforms it, giving ease to the ladder and a sense of movement in space. The rest of the spaces that were modified, were kept in the same style, only the backyard was renewed. We kept the conceptual idea of contrast used with the ladder, we left the old construction in the original material while all the new elements where painted in black.