ARCHITECTURE · 2018Casa 286
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
A walled courtyard house in the historic center, organized around a jacaranda, a shaded loggia, and a shallow stone pool.
Casa 286 is entered through a single tall door in a plastered wall; the street noise falls away almost instantly, replaced by the sound of water moving in the courtyard.
The living rooms wrap the courtyard on three sides beneath a deep loggia, their tall glazed doors folding back so that the interior and the garden read as one continuous room during the temperate months.
Local craft is present throughout — hand-fired clay floors, carved cantera stone thresholds, forged iron hardware — set against a spare architectural frame that lets the material do the speaking.
A jacaranda holds the center of the courtyard; the house was set out around its canopy rather than the reverse.