01
Casa Tepoztlán
- Year
- 2021
- Location
- Tepoztlán
- Type
- Residential
- Surface
- 480 m²
CARDENAL
We design residences and cultural spacesin singular places, in Mexico and the world.
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CASA POLANCO
№ 01Manifesto
CDMX · MMXXVI
We believe in architecture as a slow act. In the time it takes light to cross a wall, in the weight of concrete settling onto the earth, in the silent cadence with which a house learns to inhabit a place.
Every work begins with a question: what memory does this site hold, what climate accompanies it, what life wants to unfold within it. Form arrives afterwards, almost on its own, once the question has been well asked.
We do not design styles. We design precise atmospheres — residences and cultural spaces that breathe with Mexican geography and craft, and that trust material as their only rhetoric.
Cardenal · est. 1998
01 / 06Next
№ 02Selected works
0106
Six of thirty-two.
№ 03How we work
Every project advances at the same cadence. There are no shortcuts: there are five pauses that we repeat, one by one, since 1998.
Dialogue
Before drawing, we listen. We learn who will inhabit the space, the routines that sustain it, the objects that matter, the light it longs for. The project begins there, in what is still unsaid.
Month 01 — 02№ 03 · Process01 / 05
Reading the place
We walk the site at different hours and seasons. We measure the light, the wind, the views, the slope, the trees that deserve to stay. We gather its memory — what was here before, what the neighborhood says, what the climate demands.
Month 02 — 04№ 03 · Process02 / 05
Sketch
The first forms are born by hand, on paper. Trials and discards, pencils worn down. Of a hundred lines, three remain. When they appear, we take them to physical model and render to look at them with the client.
Month 04 — 08№ 03 · Process03 / 05
Construction
We follow the work week by week. We work with Mexican masters, carpenters and artisans whose craft we know by name. Every material is tested as a sample before it stays for good.
Month 08 — 22№ 03 · Process04 / 05
Inhabit
We hand over the keys, but the project continues. We return after a year, three, ten, to document how the house ages, what we adjust, what becomes patina. The work ends when no one notices it.
Year 02 — ∞№ 03 · Process05 / 05
№ 04Cardenal in figures
i. 01Years of practice
0years
Since 1998, Roma Norte.
01 / 04
i. 02Works built
0works
Mexico, Spain, Chile.
02 / 04
i. 03Qualified briefings
×0times
After redesigning the site.
03 / 04
i. 04International awards
0awards
Bienal CDMX, IF, Dezeen.
04 / 04
№ 06Who we are4 architects
Roma Norte · CDMX
A small studio by choice. Four architects who sign every decision, from the first line to the last material sample on site.
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№ 07Colophon
End of the edition
Until thenext work.
StudioCardenal EstudioSinaloa 207 · Roma NorteCDMX, Mexico
EditionEst. 1998© 2024 CardenalAll rights reservedA LiffeyLabs concept for a fictional business · Read the case
TypefacesCormorant GaramondInter Tight · JetBrains MonoSet on screen