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Architects: Ambrosi I Etchegaray
- Area: 345 m²
- Year: 2004
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Photographs:Luis Gordoa
Text description provided by the architects. The project for Jiva - bodywork center, is located inside an area of 9000 m2 located in Colonia San Angel, in Mexico City.
The location within the property and at the city level, responds to the choice of an ideal environment for the center and a legal factor of land uses, which directly determine the project.
Within the selected area in the property, a number of abandoned buildings are reused. Thus an old building located in one of the boundaries of the property is attached with two pavilions that are recycled from Casa Habitat (theme pavilion for a design fair) to form an ensemble integrated directly with nature.
The remodeling consists of reconstructing the existing building facades trying to renew the image through the use oflimestone as a coating material. Inside, the intervention consists in dividing walls that shape massage cabins and public and semipublic spaces.
Adapting Casa Habitatinto two pavilions consisted in splitting the two level volume into two volumes of one level. The modular design is what gave the versatility to this adaptation. The transformation of an indoor building into an outdoor one consisted, on the one hand, on the base (foundation) on which are mounted the wooden structures; and secondly, in the slab that is added to the construction. Also the polycarbonate facade was changed to glass.
Outside landscape work consisted of a homogeneous material covering for volumes to rest upon a sea of gravel and vegetation.
