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Seijo Peon Arquitectos: A Delightful Family Home in Merida

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Here’s a house that makes great use of large expanses of windowless stucco to create a canvas for offsetting the three pretty colours of Spain’s terracottas against each other.

The house is sited in Mérida, an old town settled by the Spanish in the balmy dry warm climate inland on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

Designed by Seijo Peon Arquitectos, much of it is completely open air for al fresco dining and living.

Slicing through the garden, the entrance from the street leads directly to an enclosed glass corridor leading to enclosed bedrooms.

To one side of that corridor, this fully al fresco dining room is sheltered only from the heat of the sun under a cooling high ceiling.

From the garden gate, the first view is a welcome from the family in the open air living and dining outdoor room.

No eating at the kitchen sink for this family.

The kitchen, not shown, is a separate and very spacious room to the right.

This is an eating space for savouring the joys of family and friends.

Large paving stones create a seamless transition from exterior to ‘interior’ space.

The corridor along the entire length of the house is glassed on both sides as it passes a garden space between the kitchen and the bedrooms.

So from the garden you can see through this part of the house.

Terraces off the bedrooms also connect with the garden.

Contrasting with entirely open ‘rooms, large expanses of featureless stucco wall allow a jolt of colour like the simplest canvas.

Together with its sober and efficient layout, this changing palette of colour brings moments of joy in traversing the spaces.

The house has a very interesting quality.

One might be startled by a visitor at the front gate as one leaves a bedroom.

But the front gate is locked. It acts as a front door.

In this way, the entire indoors and outdoors space has become ‘the house.’

Combining the private courtyard spaces of traditional Spanish living with the influence of Mies Van der Rohe, in this effortlessly simple and original and yet straightforward design, one experiences a calm and pure pleasure in the joy of living.