Casa 2G | S-AR stación-ARquitectura

Casa 2G is a 360 square meter single family home designed by S-AR, an architectural firm based in Monterrey, Mexico.

The house was designed as a sanctuary from the surrounding urban environment, as well as a series of memorable architectural spaces with the people that live in them at their conceptual core.

Casa 2G creates sensory experiences and moments that enrich its inhabitant’s daily lives, thanks in part to its sparse materiality and handmade features, which pay tribute to the artisan work of local craftsmen. The nature of this space contrasts with false ideas of human progress in a world dominated by appearances and trends.

By taking a morning tour of Casa 2-G, the viewers are able to experience those special everyday moments spent in the house. As the windows open, we take in the natural changes in the environment, and we witness the dialogue between the house and the natural light as it evolves throughout the day.

Come nightfall, the house opens up its spaces so that the light from the fire can fill us with peace as it vibrates over the raw surfaces of its walls. In Casa 2G, ordinary routine is pleasantly interrupted, and transformed into memorable moments of harmony and spiritual consciousness. 

Proposed as a basic house, the project is a simple rectangular volume with a courtyard that divides the social from the private area. Located in a residential area, the volume starts few meters behind the line of the street creating a courtyard for pedestrian and vehicular access.

A concrete wall with a door is to simplify the design of the facade of the house, making it as basic as possible. However, this lack of openings to the street, contrasts with a wide open interior space that visually connects the whole social area with the central patio, the backyard and the Sierra Madre Mountains filling the interior spaces with light and natural ventilation and establishing a strong dialogue with the landscape.

The private rooms are protected by a segmented wall that allows privacy; also every private room has a private patio to bring lighting and ventilation. The social area is a continuous sequence of kitchen, dining room, lounge and a large terrace that connects to the rear garden.

Doors, windows, metalwork and construction system are the most basic possible. The materials are left in a raw and natural way. Many of them have been done on site using materials and local labor with the intention of rescuing traditional constructive systems and jobs that have been displaced by a market of prefabricated materials, which generates low local employment and architecture based on repetition and mass.

Manual opening systems for windows and skylights and doors were designed especially for the project, developed by working closely with experienced local carpenters and blacksmiths. The architecture of the house invites the users to be part of their material structure. The use of the house generates a direct experience with materials, tactile sensations and a different consciousness of the elements that are part of the house in times of extreme lack of contact between people and objects and also between people and architecture.

Thus 90% of the components of the house have been made by local labor and have only used the lowest number of industrial materials to preserve the essential idea of the project.

Structurally, the whole volume made of reinforced concrete made in site (walls, slabs and inverted beams) floats on a platform that helps to provide insulation for the interior space, also the orientation of the house ensures the protection of the solar incidence using the existing trees on the site which bring shade to the roof of the house and also using higher volumes of neighboring houses.

The house is a reinforced concrete monolith that has been perforated to create the interior space which is then defined with a glass membrane to emphasize the continuity of the material in floors, walls and slabs and its quality to be gradually transformed by the movement of the light and the shadows that occurs both inside and outside of the house during the course of the day.

Project: Casa 2G

Architects: S-AR

Website: www.s-ar.mx

Location: San Pedro, Nuevo Leon, Mexico
Architects in charge: César Guerrero, Ana Cecilia Garza.

Program: Private House.

Client: Private.
Construction Area: 360 m2.

Project Year: 2009

Construction Year: 2010 - 2011

Photography: Ana Cecilia Garza Villarreal

Plans and Technical Drawings: S-AR

Model: S-AR

Structural Engineering: Ing. Jesús González Sáenz

Technical Supervision: S-AR + Gonzalo Taméz

Construction: Gonzalo Taméz, Enrique López, Jesús Galván

Materials: Concrete, Steel, Glass and Wood.

Constructive System: walls and slabs of reinforced concrete.