Woah! I Wasn’t Expecting to find a PREFAB HOME for $19K!!

REVEALING THE EVIDENCE Confrontation with the reality of these ruins was always a confrontation seeped in memories. Memories
of a place where the raw matter it is constituted of – the rock, the valley and the mountain – shows evident expression, provoking a game of fine balance between place, matter, light and shadow. We found light that dripped down the stone walls defining spaces separated only by rows of stacked rock. In each fissure, in each wrinkle, a soft balance between light and shadow. Standing before this scenery, the exercise consisted in finding the most natural way to connect ruins and spaces, simultaneously defining future possibilities for links between the interior and the exterior. Where decisions were concerned, we chose to rehabilitate pre-existing volumes and introduce a new connecting element. The answer is given by the almost immediate decision to join together the pre-existing elements. This
gesture, deeply connected to the terrain along the pendente – connects the two sections facing west,
forming an exterior courtyard adorned with a centenary olive tree. This project builds a space that runs through the ruins, uniting them and revealing the obvious functional relationship between the house’s programmatic areas, simultaneously differentiating the possibilities for inhabiting the exterior space. It expresses its temporality through the antagonism of matter in its relationship with pre-existing elements.

Casa Altanera is located in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, México. The lot has an area of ​​2,500m2, with minimum slope. It was established as a natural and essential order of the project to follow up on the reforestation process of the area, contributing to the regenerative process that we find in our context. A single-family housing scheme was developed, contained in three separate operating modules, distributed among social areas and two pieces that interact independently, solving a program of areas for a master bedroom for two people and four secondary rooms for eight people, including your individual and shared service areas. The interaction with the exterior was proposed through the areas that develop in the palapa. The dining room, the kitchen, the living room, the deck, and the pool, are linked together in a common space, while each unfolds from its movable facade of wooden doors, resolving climate relationships independently and sustainably. The most intimate and contemplative connection happens in the pieces of concrete and wood that contain the rooms, suggesting a protected, safe place, in which, each inhabitant would individually define the type of link with its immediate exterior, from its reading of the place.

You’d never guess this eclectic 1950s home started out as a humdrum municipal garage.

The made-in-Detroit mattress is about to become your new bedroom staple.