Family Country House with Concrete Aesthetics The Shark House, located on the outskirts of Mexico City, reinterprets the irregular urban fabric of self-built neighborhoods through a fragmented volumetric design. Built with exposed brick, the house contrasts yet harmonizes with its concrete block surroundings. Organized into three interconnected volumes, the project revolves around a sequence of patios that filter noise, bring natural light, and create a fluid indoor-outdoor relationship. Each patio serves a distinct function—from entrance threshold to quiet core and social space—forming a spatial narrative of intimacy, openness, and continuity. The design explores the balance between mass and void, offering a contemporary approach to urban living.
The Shark House is located on the outskirts of Mexico City,
in a neighborhood characterized by self-construction, exposed concrete block,
and gradual growth, which has generated a landscape of irregular and constantly changing volumes.
Instead of contradicting this condition, the project embraces it as a starting point,
reinterpreting the irregularity through a volumetric composition that gives the
impression of volumes built in different stages. Materially, the house takes up the
condition of exposed construction present in the context, but reinterprets it through
the predominant use of uncoated brick, generating a chromatic and tactile contrast
against the surrounding grey block. This decision does not seek to distance
itself from the environment, but rather to revisit the idea and use it in a different way.
The dwelling is distributed in three interconnected bodies that create a sequence of patios,
which serve as the guiding axis of the project. These patios or voids function as filters for
urban noise, provide natural lighting, and articulate a fluid relationship between the
interior and the exterior, enabling various ways of inhabiting the space.
The first patio, where the entrance is located, aims to be a threshold and transition between
the street and domestic life. The second, interior and hidden, is a silent core and
source of light, while the third, of a social nature, is progressively revealed as one moves
through the spatial sequence, establishing a relationship between intimacy and openness.
In this way, the Shark House proposes an exploration of mass and void, fragmentation
and continuity, constructing a way of inhabiting the home that is articulated around patios
as spaces of pause, silence, and encounter.
