Through a designed interplay, both front and back structures have white clay tiles as floors and white clay vaults, as well as steel hanging ladders that lead up to their respective terraces. Two majestic pre-existing trees — Jacaranda and Pepper tree — frame the garden’s stone-walled reception. Receding to the back structure, native Huaje trees give way to a shaded enclave wrapped around by adobe walls and discrete metal columns. In the middle, sprout a yellow Guayacan tree and a red-brick artistic mural; alongside, a set of stairs continue downward towards its underground stratum.

Light filters through the Guayacan tree and illuminates the underground textures of lime, concrete, wood and volcanic stone. Below the limestone esplanade, vaults of coloured concrete and lime paint walls contain the underground gallery. The concrete vaults help unify the underground operational spaces: private rooms, offices, machine rooms, bathrooms and a kitchen. Our arrangement and reiterations of native elements — clay, stone, and vegetation — respond to the overlapping of past/present so tangible in today’s Oaxaca.

In so doing, our governing intention was to provide a lens for viewing these accretions more clearly within an operational social space. Hence, for instance, the living symbol of the Guayacan tree — that reaches from below upward, from dark to light — and its centrality of this gesture to our design approach. Credits: - Photography - Camila Cossio - LM - interiorismo - Interior Design - Arquitectos Artesanos - Restoration and Mural - Grupo Cocoa - Construction