One way to employ color is through monochrome, a design technique that involves using a single tone or color in a space. In architecture, monochrome is a powerful tool where different shades can be created through the play of lights and shadows, generating spaces that offer unique experiences to their inhabitants.
The most common way to utilize this technique in architectural design is by selecting a color that is applied to the finishes. However, paying attention to the choice of textures and materials, the subtle details that create contrast, the interplay of light and shadow, scale, transitions, furniture, and interior design, as well as working with the surroundings, will make all the difference in achieving beautiful spaces.
Mexico is globally renowned for its vibrant colors, and contemporary architecture has adeptly incorporated this age-old wisdom to apply it with new design intentions. This time, we present to you a selection where you can explore various uses of monochrome in projects based in this country.
Housing
Entrepinos Housing / Taller Hector Barroso
"Amidst the forest in Valle de Bravo, Mexico, five vacation homes are scattered across the land, surrounded by pine trees that harmonize with the sound of the wind. The materials used are sourced from the region: brick, wood, and earth. The earth is from the site itself; the soil excavated for the foundations was reused as a finish on all the walls. In this way, the architecture emerges from the place."
House in Tres Rios / César Béjar Studio
"The particular way of responding to the context evokes different manners of how the architecture is expressed. Willing to be the simplest household in the neighborhood, the house is free of the ornaments that the different materials tend to evoke, its quality lies in being monochrome."
La Ribera Housing / Zeller & Moye
"A Vecindad, a traditional housing typology with simple row houses facing a linear patio in Mexico City, is re-interpreted as a new apartment building for young families. The program is implemented in a typical narrow but deep plot in the Santa María La Ribera neighborhood, just a few blocks from the famous Moorish Pavilion. As a new impulse to its immediate vicinity, the housing development contributes like a catalyst to the regeneration of the currently otherwise undervalued barrio."
Tejocote House / González Muchow Arquitectura
"Casa Tejocote is a single-family home located in a semi-urban context from Querétaro, Mexico. It is a project that through its materials and its simple composition represents the vernacular architecture of the region, which seeks to integrate with the semi-desert landscape that surrounds it."
Che' Che' House / Javier Puga Estudio
"Casa Che'Che' was born from the desire to create cool and shaded atmospheres that respond to the climate of Mérida. The main design intentions included the use of local materials such as stone, sand, and hardwoods, achieving modular architecture, exploring the play of shadows through vegetation and architectural elements, extending the space with courtyards to broaden the visual perception of interior spaces, and having spaces with significant height to prevent heat concentration in the inhabited areas."
Corsal House / MCH Arquitecto Interiorista + Echeri Bioconstrucción
"Casa Corsal pays tribute to the artisanal and construction heritage of its region. The central element of the project is the earth, which was directly extracted from the site through manual excavation and reused in the construction system, serving as a natural finish for the adobe walls that were coated with mixtures of earth, lime, and natural pigments. The materials palette is complemented by the use of wood in the ceilings and doors, as well as clay tiles and rugs with a unique design crafted from floor scraps and cuttings."
Organic House / Javier Senosiain
"The original concept of the project drew inspiration from a peanut shell: two wide oval spaces filled with ample natural light, connected by a narrower, dimly lit central area. This proposal emerged from the fundamental requirements of human living: a shared space for living, featuring a living room, dining area, and kitchen, and a separate space for sleeping, equipped with a dressing room and bathroom. The core idea revolves around these two expansive zones—a day space and a night space—aiming to create an immersive experience where occupants feel a connection with the earth, maintaining the distinctiveness of this space while remaining integrated with the surrounding green areas."
Casa F133 / 0studio Arquitectura
"House F133 applies the naturalness of materials, as they change according to the passage of time and the shifts in the climate. They add a story to the play of bodies and voids that is linked to the immediate context of the site, thanks to the opening of all the fronts of the house, creating different atmospheres and visuals that the user obtains according to the selected area."
Villa Cava / Espacio 18 Arquitectura
"The chosen materials were selected to blend in with the immediate context, considering that it is a humid area, prone to rain and possible hurricanes. We have created a fortress that gradually unfolds and unveils itself fully as a sculpted sculpture. Concrete and wood strike a balance to generate interior warmth for the user and delineate the pathways. Furthermore, the interior design by Kayla Pongrac transforms the project into a home."
Carretas Renovation / Heryco
"Carretas is a renovation project of an apartment building located in a residential, family-friendly, and pedestrian neighborhood in Querétaro, with proximity to and views of the iconic Aqueduct of Querétaro. Despite the challenges, our goal was to give the building a more youthful image by using pigmented lime stucco, steel details, art, and furniture, creating a cohesive and elegant visual effect."
Culture and Education
Cortés Sea Research Center / Tatiana Bilbao
"The proposed building is the place where nature, both marine and terrestrial, meets architecture and the world of human beings. Nature lives and grows around and inside the building, giving the project identity, a sense of belonging to the place, and making the experience unique and complete. As a trigger for the space, an orthogonal, rational, functional, and flexible structure is proposed, with identity and belonging to the place where it is implanted. It simultaneously solves spaces, structures, envelopes, installations, and integration with the environment. "
The Clay Pavillion / Alvaro Siza + BAAQ'
"Casa Wabi's staff identified that teaching the technique and the process for handling clay would be a very positive tool for the community since this is a technique that has been taught for generations. Thanks to this initiative, Casa Wabi invited Architect Alvaro Siza to design a pavilion for teaching the handling of this material. The entire program is contained within a brick wall in a half-circle shape enclosing a patio for the clay oven."
La Ribera Center for Culture and Arts / ATELIER ARS
"For the configuration of the new cultural center, the starting point of our intervention was the recovery of the preexisting on the site: an auditorium for 400 people and an office building. The auditorium already contained a portico with traditional brick vaults that we recognized as the most valuable preexisting element in architectural terms. That is why we decided that the rest of the buildings would be constructed with clay elements from the region, using different formats and construction systems, to produce a sense of unity, and in turn, as a way of helping to perpetuate the artisanal knowledge that is still found in the region."
Music House / Colectivo C733
"Spacious and well-ventilated spaces were built using local coconut wood, brick, and clay tiles to provide warmth, natural freshness, and good acoustics. The project provides a space for the social gatherings of local people, with warm materials and natural freshness through cross ventilation. For musicians, spacious, isolated, and equipped classrooms."
Anahuacalli Museum / Taller de Arquitectura - Mauricio Rocha
"By respecting the levels of the main plaza in the new buildings, the dock, and the courtyard become the articulators between constructed spaces, leaving a rugged topography of the volcanic landscape below, allowing for certain covered open spaces to achieve two new outdoor workshops. The pre-existing buildings take on a new program or expand it. The buildings are recessed in their base to achieve a smaller impact on the landscape, the materiality of the new buildings with concrete slabs and volcanic stone in their base, walls, and machine-cut latticework that, starting from 30x15cm pieces with a height of 90cm, mounted and interwoven, achieve in their modulation an open latticework with openings that are regulated by the view of the landscape."
Maria Montessori Mazatlán School / EPArquitectos + Estudio Macías Peredo
"Mazatlán is a city on the Pacific Coast that maintains a humid and high-temperature climate great part of the year, invites us to think about an architecture that in principal faces climate and consider the high degree of salinity of the site. The strategy for this school should aim to both minimize the impact of heat in the classroom; without losing natural illumination and relation to the outside, as well as the use of materials and constructive systems that were little prone to corrosion."
Bars and Restaurants
Banal Restaurant / Reims 502
"A peculiar detail of the construction was the implementation of a hanging hollow block latticework: an essential element to mitigate sun exposure, moderate the view from the interior towards street traffic, and ventilate the inner smoking area in the terrace. Collectively, the use of simple, low maintenance exposed materials, the advantage of natural lighting and ventilation, and the practicality of the open floor plan were also complementary strategies for the fulfillment of this project."
Mezcalería Tlecan / Anagrama
"The architecture of the place is inspired by the sensation one experiences when entering a pre-Hispanic tomb and by the modernist architecture of Mexico City. As part of the interior design, we decided to pay a special tribute to the sculpture from the Mesoamerican Classic Period titled 'Disk of Death' for its simplicity and geometric sophistication. The piece was commissioned to Tezontle Estudio."
Mezcalería Maguey / Daniela Bucio Sistos // Taller de Arquitectura y Diseño
"When learning about the production of mezcal, the formal and interior design proposal is based on the feeling of being underground or buried, similar to how certain types of mezcal are produced. The space features earthy tones achieved through polished concrete and brick. From the corridors of the plaza, only the warm light of the mezcal bar can be faintly perceived. Upon entering the establishment, an exposed brick vault encloses the central space, revealing the bar."
Hospitality
Hotel Terrestre / Taller de Arquitectura X / Alberto Kalach
"One of the main design axes was sustainability and the use of locally sourced materials that would reduce the environmental footprint of the project. The exteriors are made up of clay, brick, wood, and concrete, while the interiors integrate clay and sand, incorporated with the wooden frames of the windows and doors as well as the custom furniture designed by Mexican designer Oscar Hagerman."
Sforza House / Taller de Arquitectura X / Alberto Kalach
"Both the interior and exterior spaces are comprehensively designed in line with the overall concept and earthy tones, where the locally sourced bricks and coverings appear to be crafted from the same coastal sand. Custom-made wooden latticework is applied to each arcade, featuring small blinds that provide privacy without completely obstructing the view of the landscape. These blinds also allow for the circulation of air, creating a more pleasant indoor climate in each of the eleven rooms, divided into junior, senior, and master suites. Following this design approach, built-in fixtures like sinks and bathtubs give the impression of being carved on-site, as if the entire building were a stone found in situ and sculpted for habitation."
Commercial Buildings
Matamoros Market / Colectivo C733
"An umbrella system based on a metal triangular-trapezoidal-shaped structure prefabricated in modules to which their very shape gives rigidity build a perimeter portico covering gaps of nine meters in distance with structures no larger than 5 inches capable of withstanding a hurricane or flood despite its lightness. The angle of inclination responds to the load reduction in addition to the structural stress work, also providing optimal runoff for water and snow. The system considers a lower skin that works as a thermal insulator, in this case, a 2 cm thick partition, maintaining an exterior sheet skin that is ideal for the weather and rain catchment, also functioning as a solar reflector. The lanterns facilitate the crossing of the wind and the optimal natural lighting for the other 40 premises that sit informally in the heart of the porch with assigned areas of 3x3mts that allow maintaining spatial flexibility and use for the people of the community."
Offices
Iturbide Studio / Taller de Arquitectura Mauricio Rocha + Gabriela Carrillo
"On a plot of 7x14 in the Barrio del Niño Jesús and just a few steps from Graciela Iturbide's house, a small tower of only three levels extruded in a literal way extrudes its measurements in the plan to become a solid piece of clay that de-constructs before its own materiality in very thin and almost imperceptible tensions of steel."
This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: Color in Architecture presented by Sto.
Material, texture, sheen, and color are inseparable – the identity of a building becomes clear in an Architect’s choices of how these come together. Considered through the lifecycle of a building from design, occupation and legacy, we understand that achieving the right expression is tantamount to the success of a building. Sto’s innovative materials and data driven color system compliment design ambitions with technical knowledge and rigorous testing, to offer possibilities, accuracy, and longevity when Building in Color.
Produced by Sto, the short documentary ‘Building in Colour’ is a cinematic exploration into the role of materials and color in architecture, taking the work of Stirling Prize winning architect Michael Wilford CBE (1938 – 2023) as it's starting point.
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