Antonio Caso

In the heart of La Tabacalera, one of the most emblematic neighborhoods in Mexico City, is the Casa de Landa y Escandón; unique for its French Renaissance style with Gothic accents that have earned it the status of heritage preservation. Today, we can find an endless number of stores that surround the facades of this listed building, hand in hand with a new social rhythm that requires new meeting and living spaces.

Under this premise, the MAYER HASBANI office proposes a redesign and conceptualization of Casa de Landa y Escandón that allows to maintain two scales: the previous one – in a pedestrian level that responds to the width of the streets and the old neighborhood – and the current one – an urbanism that consolidates uses and functions in high vertical densities, in perfect synchrony with the spirit that characterizes the current city.

Through the intelligent and strategic use of geometry, the architects of MAYER HASBANI draw, from the street, a vanishing line that allows to re-organize the facades of the new building into a diagonal facing south that privileges the sunshine of the apartments. Thus, the new facade antagonizes with the remaining public square and allows to increase the total height of the building without overshadowing the sunshine to the streets that frame it.

Regardless of having low level neighbors, the intelligent geometric proposal allows the new 28 level inhabitant to become an urban window that opens the horizon towards the heart of La Tabacalera; generating a delicate symphony of full and empty where all the housing spaces open to the city with green terraces product of the perfect staggered geometry of the building.

As one looks away, the silhouette of the building seems to fade into pixels, blending into the texture of the city. A great exercise on strategic intervention and energetic architecture that reminds us that the interaction with an existing building should not always be subtle but should be faithful to the present time that gave birth to it.