GROUND FLOOR / Garden

According to photographic documents and descriptions made by the architect himself, the garden originally contained larger lawn extensions. There was a broad clearing in front of the living room. Overall, the garden had a more domesticated character.

Luis Barragán’s decision to allow the garden to grow more freely resulted in the garden’s current personality, an opulent, almost wild garden that evokes ancient orchards where vegetation has a life of its own.

It is an oasis in the middle of the urban desert that Mexico City has become. This oasis is essentially monochromatic; save for the white or orange jasmines and narcissus. It is composed by several shades of intense green, a color never used in Barragán’s palette.

Although relatively limited in its physical dimensions, the visual appropriation the garden makes of the neighboring vegetation, the Ortega house and garden, produces a deep and dense perspective.

GROUND FLOOR / Garden’s façade

The windows of the western façade show some corrections hardly concealed when seen from the outside. These scars give the façade a careless aspect and at the same time add a documental value for the analysis.

It is clear that in Barragán’s architecture, windows are thought and constructed from the inside as a result of the reflection of its use and the relationship they keep with the inhabited space, not as a consequence of final façade compositions, which sometimes result literal expressions of this fact. It is organic architecture that grows outwards from its core.

The window sills by the dining room and the breakfast room have been elevated about 25 centimeters, possibly as a visual correction from the table view.

In the master bedroom the most evident correction has made the window rise from the floor up to a middle height. From the garden, the glass of the window remains blocked.