Students Benefit From Architecture Program in Mexico
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Courtesy House + House Architects
Cathi House talks with summer students at the new school and ret…
Cathi House talks with summer students at the new school and retreat center, which features a wall of indigenous volcanic stone.
Courtesy House + House Architects
On a 20-foot-by-220-foot lot, four CASA buildings are linked by …
On a 20-foot-by-220-foot lot, four CASA buildings are linked by gardens, courtyards, and fountains.
Courtesy House + House Architects
The CASA building, built with local materials and labor, support…
The CASA building, built with local materials and labor, supports a variety of uses.
Courtesy House + House Architects
Soaring
expanses of glass tie rooms to the sun-filled terraces…
Soaring
expanses of glass tie rooms to the sun-filled terraces.
Courtesy House + House Architects
Light floods the 22-foot-high central studio with its glass-and-…
Light floods the 22-foot-high central studio with its glass-and-steel bridge.
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The tall ceilings give the interior a sense of openness.
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Made with local labor and materials, interiors feature travertin…
Made with local labor and materials, interiors feature travertine floors, a continuous red accent wall, steel railings, whitewashed surfaces, and an old stone wall.
Courtesy House + House Architects
A folded plate steel stair connects levels of the third CASA bui…
A folded plate steel stair connects levels of the third CASA building.
Courtesy House + House Architects
CASA students are immersed in San Miguel’s cultural heritage, …
CASA students are immersed in San Miguel’s cultural heritage, including 17th-century architecture and the Parroquia Cathedral on the town square.
Courtesy House + House Architects
Mexico City stops included the work of architects including Luis…
Mexico City stops included the work of architects including Luis Barragan, Enrique Norten, and Theodore Gonzalez de Leon.
Courtesy House + House Architects
The Anahuacalli, Museum near Mexico City holds Diego Rivera’s …
The Anahuacalli, Museum near Mexico City holds Diego Rivera’s studio and collection of pre-Columbian artifacts.
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Students visited a museum housing Diego Rivera’s "Dream of a S…
Students visited a museum housing Diego Rivera’s "Dream of a Sunday Afternoon" in Alameda Park, originally painted in the Hotel Prado in 1947.
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San Miguel blacksmith Gustavo Cano demonstrates welding and cutt…
San Miguel blacksmith Gustavo Cano demonstrates welding and cutting techniques for fabricating the student-designed steel light fixtures.
Courtesy House + House Architects
Analytical design exercises help students find their voice as de…
Analytical design exercises help students find their voice as designers.
Courtesy House + House Architects
Cathi House presides over a design crit session with students.
Courtesy House + House Architects
Cathi and Steven House pose with students on a field trip to the…
Cathi and Steven House pose with students on a field trip to the 1732 Hospice of the Holy Trinity, in Guanajuato.
San Miguel de Allende’s streetscapes are inscrutable. Seventeenth-century buildings form a continuous wall on the winding cobblestone streets, and CASA, the new Center for Architecture, Sustainability + Art, is indistinguishable in its surroundings. But behind the deep red stucco façade are four soaring cubes linked by courtyards. In May, its doors opened to American architecture students for five intensive weeks of analytical design exercises, field trips, and theoretical debate.
For San Francisco architects Cathi and Steven House, who first traveled to central Mexico in the early 1990s to source Cantera stone, the idea was years in the making. The principals of House + House Architects purchased three infill lots near the Jardin—the central plaza with its signature pink granite cathedral. On two lots they built a vacation getaway/satellite office and a rental house. The couple finished construction on CASA in the spring, offering the seminar’s inaugural run to students from Virginia Tech, their alma mater.
The Houses describe the study abroad program as “loosely modeled on the Bauhaus.” Participants receive academic credits for classes in architecture, art, and sustainable building. They’re also offered courses in fiber arts, painting, and ceramics and the opportunity to test their ideas with local blacksmiths, carpenters, and artisans.
The goal: to give students a holistic view of architecture, and to help them find their voice as designers. “Travel is so important to keeping the creative spirit alive,” says Steven House, AIA. “To go to an ancient place and walk paths that have been walked for hundreds of years changes who you are and how you think about your work.”
In this culturally rich enclave, where expat retirees, artists, and writers mingle with Mexicans on the town square and four-star restaurants share the streets with elote vendors, the couple also hopes to host groups of architects who “gather at our long table to have interesting conversations at night, when we’re not burdened by the realities of work,” Cathi House says. In addition to Virginia Tech, the summer program will be offered to other universities as it evolves.
