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I started working on this house in 1991, that's already 11 years ago. I had a
little money, not much, and I wanted to have my own place. I already had the
land, about two hectares in the mountainous area surrounding Tenango de Doria, a
small town about 4 hours from Mexico city, half way between the high plateau ant
the Gulf of Mexico. The place itself is beautiful; this is la Huasteca, part of
the Sierra Madre Oriental, a place out of time, a microcosm worlds apart from
Mexico city, even if it's not that far. This is Otomi region, and otomi language
(or ñahñuh) is still widely spoken in the smaller towns and rancherias scattered
around Tenango. The original design of the house is by a cousin of mine, José Luis RoblesGil
Cañedo, who is the closer to a genius that I personally know, and as a good
genius, he is also a neurotic and a paranoid, and it is very difficult to deal
with him for a long period of time without having any problems. But the genius
remains, and I respect him very much for that.
This is one of his smaller projects. The shape of the house is a double
helicoid inscribed in a circle of 10 meters of diameter. The built in area is 78
square meters. As you may know, the circle is the shape that gives the most area
per perimeter, thus maximizing the space, though of course in the real world
building in a circle shape is so much more complicated than in a square shape.
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I worked on the house for about one year, and then I ran out of money. The
original budget that was meant for the whole house lasted for no more than the
foundations and the walls, and then I had to stop working on the house. It
stayed there for almost 7 years, without doing anything on it. The climate here
is humid, and the bush grows so fast and thick that after some time you couldn't
see the walls of the house from a distance of ten meters. It was like in the
middle of a jungle.
Then in January 1998 I came back from another one of my travels and had some
more money in my pocket and decided to work on the house till I could see it
finished. It took me 3 years. This time I didn't look for my cousin, I took on
the project and changed a lot of things from the original design, adapting them
to new circumstances ( he was not very happy about that ), and did most of the
work myself, with only some occasional help from paid laborers. I did all the
plumbing, electricity, tiling and carpentry work. The carpentry in particular
took me a long time to make, and those rounded, irregular windows were anything
but easy. All was done with great care for detail.
This is a one of a kind, beautifully crafted house. There is one indispensible element you have to have in order to build a house like this. Money is not, though it is always convenient to have some. Time is much more important, because most of the things you will have to do yourself. In order to maintain the stamina, you have to have an obsession. And so we're getting to the one true indispensible element: you have to be a little bit crazy. |