Date: 2017
Location: Tlaxcala, Tlax. Mx.
Area: 326.96 M2
Design: Luis Moctezuma
Project Partner: Sonia López Domínguez
Collaborators: Adolfo Flores
Team: Enrique Aguilar and Marcela Quiroz
Construction: Luis Moctezuma
Intervention Project for a house located in the Historic Center of the City of Tlaxcala. The improvement proposal for this building for commercial use (occupied as a building for commercial use for many years and previously as a house) is based on the idea of taking advantage of existing resources, mainly physical, therefore it was sought that the The construction or demolition rate was as low as possible, with the main challenge of finding the habitability of the space, not to mention mainly structural errors inherited from a couple of failed interventions.
The project, as in some cases was already given, was only a matter of observing and proceeding according to the space as well as the needs of the inhabitant. The resolution was: Compositely clarify the reading of the building in a simple geometry based on four volumes with a rectangular plan and a void (patio) that articulates all the bodies, where only one of these volumes corresponded to a historical period and therefore protected, while the other three volumes corresponded to different periods with a maximum of 50 years of construction according to information from the owners and observed construction systems.
Constructively, the complete removal of the pavements was proposed first to eliminate the problem of unevenness and the lack of slope in the sanitary network, thus avoiding the floods that frequently occur in the building, remove all the plastered (most of them full of moisture, crumbling and unpainted saltpeter) to make them new and leave them to the same lead and appearance. A final finish was envisaged on internal lime-polished walls to maintain a regional language and not a decontextualized modernism, while a cement-lime-sand mortar-based polishing was applied to the exterior walls, in both cases it was not necessary. applying paint.
The roof was the third step, several meters of rows of damp partition were removed, with fungus and mold that served as parapets but that more than help had been the culprits of the accumulation of rainwater for many years and the consequent deterioration of the roofs, in the same way enough areas of the roofs were re-leveled to improve the evacuation of rainwater and finally in this matter some rainwater downspouts were relocated with the same objective.
Fourth step, as the effect of the water in the slabs and the lack of structural criteria at the time this house was built (joist and vault slabs, other solid ones and a Catalan pair), the failure or expiration of a pair was evident. of slabs for which we proceeded to reinforce them so as not to pull and reuse, thus metal beams (type mounted in a box) were installed as load-bearing elements which were embedded in the walls at one end and rested on a mother beam at the other (made of type I metal) which in turn rests on new columns, thus contributing to the useful life of the element and the safety of the construction.
Regarding the bathrooms, the existing ones were dismantled to install new sanitary modules with new registers and pipes, in a men’s room in a bay and in another women’s bathroom. The bathrooms and main corridor were finished with dark gray stone-type ceramic floors, the commercial premises were finished on the same floor but in light gray, all with natural aluminum and clear glass doors.
The courtyard or corridor is crowned with a dome that floats above the new roof parapets, based on a series of black metal profiles (PTR) that line all the spaces with sunlight, this dome also has the task of protecting from the rain and allowing visitors to walk, but being elevated above the roof level it allows natural air circulation. It should be noted that the main bay of the façade was not intervened except for the demolition of some false polystyrene and galvanized wire walls, recently displaced and used as divisions.