Boxes in Gloom and Guest Pavilion - Manuel Cervantes

This residence, designed for a couple who are antique dealers and art collectors, is located in the heart of San Miguel de Allende, a town with a colonial history where vernacular architecture has given rise to shapes, textures, and proportions over the centuries. The design enters into a dialogue with this heritage from a contemporary and abstract stance, evoking the stereotomy of the convents, monasteries, and churches that define the architectural identity of the surroundings. The house does not aim to replicate, but to reinterpret: thick walls, hermetic volumes, and inward-facing courtyards become strategies that, beyond their symbolism, fulfil a precise function in response to the desert climate of the region and the hustle and bustle of the town. The architecture offers protection, calm, regularity.