A three-story, 1,800 m² residence composed of the main house plus study and wellness pavilions, set sensitively into a steep slope to preserve the existing vegetation. Its brutalist, sculptural expression is built from concrete planes and a sober material palette — concrete, Tikal green marble, black stone, and Mexican oak — which also shapes the interior design, from finishes and palette to furniture and FF&E.
Materiality
Fixed furniture
The fixed interior furniture was conceived as an extension of the project’s architectural language, echoing its sober, monolithic, sculptural character. Through clean volumes, contained masses, and an austere composition, each piece seeks to become part of the same formal logic.
Several iterations, in which composition, proportion, and materiality were essential to consolidate coherence with the language of the project.
This project is a weekend house on the outskirts of central Tepeji. The site belongs to a gated community of generous lots with access to the Tepeji river at the rear. Its elongated shape and pronounced slope determined the stepped organization of the house, following the natural inclination of the terrain.
Multiple configurations of form and volume were explored, weighing the buildable area against integration with the natural surroundings. These iterations were essential to define the architectural parti — particularly access, spatial relationships, and the use of natural light.
Iterations · Author: Arch. Pedro Ramírez de Aguilar
"Four-step sketch" method
The "Four-step sketch" method, proposed by Jake Knapp in his book Sprint, was applied to synthesize ideas and define the best solution for this project. The process culminated in a floor plan that responds comprehensively to access, circulation, distribution, spatial relationships, and environmental conditions.
The landscape strategy offers changing scenery through the seasons, drawing on blooms and color shifts in strategic plant groupings that interact visually with one another.
From the first sketches, the existing vegetation played a fundamental role. The intention was to fully integrate nature with the architecture, creating planted enclosures that provide privacy between functions and along the site boundary.
Program
The program is designed to host between 24 and 26 people, working as a family gathering place. The social areas therefore act as connecting cores — to the private zones as well as to strategic landscape points and recreational areas.
Kambio Homes is a residential project of 212 units developed for a real-estate company in Englewood, Florida. The objective was to design a unique housing typology using local materials (framing), incorporating prefabricated construction methods or modular on-site assembly.
An exhaustive investigation of local vernacular architecture was carried out first, analyzing how these traditional solutions respond effectively to the frequent floods that have historically affected the region. Contemporary architecture adjacent to the area was highlighted as a contextual reference.
Interior sketches
South Florida Architecture · A response to the subtropical climate
A study in Englewood revealed a 57% probability of floods exceeding 5 ft (1.5 m) before 2050. This finding shaped the elevation and distribution of the project’s key spaces.
Englewood, Florida · site evolutionReferences: Chickee · Kingsley Plantation · Cracker Houses · Walker Guest House · Revere Quality House · Cocoon House
To protect the house from flooding, it was raised via a ramp from level 0.0, leaving the ground floor free of essential functions.
The design proposes three offset levels: social areas and kitchen on the second level, private bedrooms on the third. A central core combines hydraulic services with the main circulation, optimizing privacy and views.
Forbes Ecuador, a renowned magazine, set out to enter digital audiovisual content production, for which a 10 m² room was remodeled.
The design combines 3 differentiated framings to provide versatile recording options. Special attention went to the acoustic conditioning of the space, ensuring optimal performance given its proximity to the administrative offices.
To improve acoustic quality, rock wool in the walls, noise-absorbing panels, and carpet are proposed to counteract echo. These measures optimize the sound environment by reducing reverberation and minimizing interference during recordings.
Technical planMultimedia room
The conceptualization of the space centers on versatility and coherence with the Forbes Under 30 theme, despite its reduced dimensions. The goal is to create flexible settings, with no fixed background color, that can adapt to the varied topics of the interviews. Recognizing the impact of color on the perception of space, it is used strategically to generate the right atmosphere for each scenario.
The Cuicocha lagoon was formed by a volcanic explosion on the slopes of Cotacachi, triggered by the release of energy from an internal magma chamber. The eruption gave rise to the current body of water and the islets that emerge within it.
The landscape is conceived as a living organism with a continuous energy cycle, where energy flows and transforms from the depths of the earth, crossing the void and manifesting at the surface.
A 14-km path runs along the lagoon’s edge, accompanied by 15 transects documenting different types of vegetation as one ascends from 3,100 m above sea level. The walk, roughly two hours long, allows total immersion in nature. The diversity of vegetation, the changes in altitude, and the latent energy of the landscape turn the walk into contemplation, meditation, and sensory connection with nature.
Sketch · energy flow of the landscape
The walk invites silence and introspection, in a setting free of visual noise where the human scale confronts the vastness of nature.
The project integrates cautiously, leaving traces in the landscape: only one visible wall enters the mountain, marking the access. The two contemplation spaces hide inside the mountain, revealing their path only through openings that admit zenithal light. The volcanic rock, with its color and irregular texture, reflects the light and amplifies its presence in the space.
Richard Long — the British artist who traces marks through walking — was a key reference for his way of linking geography, geometry, and experience.
The architectural parti is organized along two crossing axes, marking entrances and aligning with the solar path.
Cotacachi volcano · Cuicocha lake
Composite volumeStereotomy revealed
Geometric traces (voids) amid the landscape
Space 1 · In Praise of the Horizon
The openings in the landscape are designed from a study of the sun’s path throughout the year. It is light — as the force that lightens matter — that reveals and gives meaning to the space of contemplation.
For Campo Baeza, stereotomic architecture seeks light, understood as the essential material binding the human being to architectural space.
Observation — feeling the void. Meditation — feeling the “fullness”.
Plan and section · void, horizon, fullness
Space 2 · In Praise of the Sky
The water’s reflection once served as a canvas for observing the stars, projecting the firmament onto its still surface. In the same way, it projects the reflection of the self — inviting a state of introspection and personal reflection, in a setting that calls the human being to reconnect with their deepest spiritual needs through space.
Stereotomic objects, sculpted from the earth, reveal the contemplation of the depth of the water and of the sky.
The conceptual proposal consists of installing furniture that adapts to its surroundings, giving the space new functions and complementing the pre-existing elements. The aim is a harmonious composition between new and existing, offering guests a renewed experience and improving the hostel’s overall functionality.
Intervention scheme
Object #1 · Terrace
A solid, movable table (h = 60 cm) and three seats — for one, two, and three people (h = 45 cm) — form an assemblable system.
In the flexible context of the terrace, assemblable furniture was designed to adapt to different functions, whether group gatherings or individual stays. The result is a versatile, welcoming space where people can enjoy varied activities and adjust it with ease.
Assemblable table and seats
Plan configurationsTerrace
Object #2 · Vertical circulation
Object #2 is a linear element for sitting and storage that accompanies the hostel’s main corridor. Its color is chosen strategically to create visual impact and highlight its presence within the space, in harmony with the vibrant style and overall atmosphere of the place.
The project departs from the problem of urban residue in the city and proposes reintegrating into the urban fabric the idea of a theater — understood as a political space, unregulated by laws or formal institutions, that promotes knowledge and culture through the judgment and confrontation of its constituent parts.
It therefore generates educational and cultural spaces that act as dynamizing axes for the Larrea neighborhood, where it is located.
The main challenge is to dialogue with a pre-existing underground architectural object, respecting its identity as an urban fact while facing a city in constant transformation at the surface.
The goal is to make the underground space habitable by introducing environmental conditions such as natural light and ventilation into a structure sitting 16 meters below Plaza República. The work is conceived as a single post-tensioned body, contained and bounded by diaphragm walls.
Longitudinal section
The intervention is organized on three levels: underground, ground, and aerial. At street level, a plaza is structured along axes defined by flows and points of activity in the public space. These axes create green corridors connecting to the La Alameda park Metro station — resolving the site’s topographic challenges, improving pedestrian accessibility and walkability, and encouraging public transport use in the area.
Plan · La Alameda park
The project integrates into the urban fabric by offering public spaces that mainly benefit the 7 educational institutions within a 500-meter radius. As part of the proposal, a political space is planned to answer needs of knowledge, learning, recreation, and play.
The pre-existing ramps of the old parking garage form the heart of the project, connecting every level. They become multifunctional elements: not just circulation routes but usable spaces — lounges and auditoriums — along their path.
Axonometric sectionsReforming the structure
Adapting the existing underground structure is key, since it allows it to meet the new conditions of use.
The project poses an architectural exercise built on a reflection about ambiguity and dualism, also drawing on the concepts of complexity and contradiction developed by Venturi in his book.
On this basis, a list of characteristics is established as rules of the game — inspired by director Lars von Trier’s methodology — to guide the development of the architectural object:
1. Recognition of the capacity of spaces and elements to take on dual functions.
2. Tension between compositional order and its transgression, exploring opposing pairs: order / chaos · light / darkness · gravity / structure · addition / subtraction · wide / thin · a non-linear relationship between exterior and interior, articulated through contained complexity.
The project sits in Quito’s Iñaquito neighborhood, within a vast abandoned industrial area that is gradually turning residential. This process has left large urban voids — like this site, which stands out in the city as an imposing element by its scale and structure.
Its perimeter is bounded by a tall blind wall that hides the void inside; instead it produces a strong visual impact, acting as a walled boundary. This creates a contradiction between reality and perception.
Site plan
The public project proposes opening up to the city, breaking these visual barriers and generating permeability to weave the place back into the urban fabric.
Overall perspective
The wall that bounds the site becomes the conceptual basis of the project. It acts as a great plinth connecting the architectural object with the city, working as a mirror that reflects its dense, monotonous surroundings at ground level.
The proposed elements do not follow the area’s usual typology, maintaining a synergic duality of forms and spaces. Circles (voids) are introduced as spaces of encounter and connection, diagonals mark the separation of functions, and existing right-angled spaces are preserved for housing and laboratories.
Plans and sections · blocks b and c · rear facadePlans
The wall bordering the project contains the central void, hosting an educational and research program oriented toward the city. The project creates spaces designed specifically for the exchange of knowledge between scientists and researchers from around the world — a repository of laboratories, classrooms, and areas that actively promote learning in the interstitial spaces generated between blocks.
Four-sided auditorium and classroomsUrban section View project →
Nº 10 / Academic
Center for Cultural Promotion and Applied-Arts Workshops
The intervention in the former Banco La Previsora building transforms a residual urban space, aiming to revitalize it and turn it into a landmark for the appreciation and diffusion of art.
The proposal preserves the architectural value of the building’s exterior facade while, inside, it seeks to conquer the space through the void as the main structuring element, following the concept of the free section (Rem Koolhaas).
La Previsora Building · Hopkins & Dentz Architects
The project stems from an experimental recognition of the lived experience and legacy of colonial art of the Quito School in Quito’s Historic Center.
Given its relationship with the immediate context and current regulations, the building’s original facades are largely preserved. The only interventions occur at ground level, where the existing windows become new entrances opening onto Plaza Chica — a historic space traditionally used for themed fairs, now redefined as a place of gathering and recreation.
Urban analysis · Historic Center of QuitoGround floor and Plaza ChicaBuilding timeline, 1937 — present
In this context, the ground floor becomes a public area connected directly to the pedestrian street Eugenio Espejo and Plaza Chica, articulating a program oriented toward commerce and exhibition.
Exhibition capsules
The building’s pre-existing structure consists of a solid perimeter load-bearing box, which allows the removal of superstructure elements and non-structural slabs deteriorated by abandonment.
Yellow exhibition capsules are inserted into the interior, designed to generate new spatial experiences. The central void connects the building’s 11 floors, turning it into an incubator for artists and an ideal environment for exchanging knowledge and techniques through applied-arts workshops.
The project seeks to rescue and empower the work of contemporary artists, giving them a space to strengthen and continue the living tradition of art.
Facade breakdown
Capsules and program
Interaction with the spectator
The capsules — dance theater, auditorium, and play house — anchor to the upper part of the structural box and explore different modes of interaction with the spectator: radial flow of continuous movement, linear interaction with two rows of seating, and movable seating for flexible use.
The ground floor features double- and triple-height exhibition spaces, designed as showcases for selling the products made in the workshops.
Program axonometric
The program is articulated through the void, letting the observer’s gaze travel freely through the building’s interior in a vertical journey. The space thus works as a grand showcase for art and craft exhibitions, consolidating itself as a new artistic and cultural landmark in the city of Quito.
