Not just anyone can look at a simple concrete building on a Mexican hillside and have a vision worthy of the 2017 American Architecture Prize. But Sergio Portillo isn’t just anyone. His work has been featured on magazine covers worldwide since he established his firm in 2014. The award-winning Villa Jardín, or “Garden Home,” is one of his latest and most noteworthy, accomplished with landscape designers Integración Orgánica.
A thoughtfully placed reflection pool is one of three features that elevate the home’s terraces to award-winning status.
Villa Jardín began its life as no more than a rectangular footprint with views across a leafy, placid canyon outside Mexico City. By the time it was complete, it had become an homage to the natural world and to modern indoor-outdoor living, with multiple sanctums of activity and contemplation, one for each part of the day.
A place to truly live out of doors, even in the rain. Precipitation is thwarted by a layer of glazing that covers the slatted sunscreen above. The warm air currents and herbaceous aromas of the dry Mexican canyon are free to waft through this wall-less living space.
It earned the American Architecture Prize for Outdoor Designs by creating, as its maker says, “a dialogue between the constructed building and the environment.” It’s a conversation that will go on and on as long as its residents live there, thanks to three convertible walls placed throughout: an interior sliding accent wall that can close the kitchen off from the formal areas; glazing that opens to create a grand indoor-outdoor living area; and a small, trellis-like privacy screen that can convert a cube-shaped outdoor sitting area into the wraparound patio’s pièce de résistance, or slide closed to form a private sanctuary accessible from the bedrooms.
While certain forms divide the space, others, like the vertical boxed garden adorning the entire northern exterior wall, unify it. Its boxes are built from reclaimed wood from the shoring system used in the home’s construction. While the vertical garden seems to extend the canyon’s vegetation all around the home, its repetition of rectangles echos the graphic nature of the patio roof and keeps the ambience chic and modern, yet relaxed.
The “Garden Cube” is a simple idea with impeccable execution. Its size, shape, location, lighting design, and convertibility make it an unforgettable feature. A glazed roof provides just enough privacy and protection from the elements while, horizontally, it’s open to the air currents and vegetation.
The wall of foliage sets the stage for three elemental features that provide identity and transition from terrace to terrace. The first is a pool of water that symbolizes purification and provides soothing movement and sound. The second is a garden of energy stones. The third is a vertical vegetable garden in the farthest sanctuary, designed to blend the gully’s natural vegetation with the living space.
The beams that form a complete cube reassure the visitor of nature’s constancy and authority, while providing a blank canvas for one’s own ruminations.
Villa Jardín’s private nooks make for excellent midday or evening escapes, but there’s only one place to be when the sun is setting over the hills and painting the sky: the lower terrace, a few steps below the main living area. This terrace provides access, via a staircase, to the canyon below. Its closer proximity to the natural landscape and entrance into it are more signals of the home’s close relationship to the environment. Without cover, this is the place to soak up the last rays of sunshine and light lamps in preparation for an evening celebration.
