Restoration

An intervention of an existing building to accommodate travellers visiting Mérida, Yucatán. The work is located 150m from one of the main avenues “Paseo Montejo” and very close to the historic centre of the city. The architectural response seeks to restore and to leave evidence of the passage of time affecting the building. The impression of time is preserved by scraping the walls in order to show the different colours they have gone through, by preserving the oxides of the metalworks and by recycling and recovering doors and windows.

In the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto, the wrecking ball continues to swing. The wooden townhouses that give the city so much of its atmosphere are disappearing at a rate of about 800 machiya a year.

The Cafe Camptong project is designed to transform an old building stood empty for a long time in Apgujeong, Gangnam, a place having the most urban context in Seoul, into a cultural space. This project began with a consideration about how to build a new relationship between the building with stopped time and isolated spaces and the city. A building can easily change its shape from a market space of the past into an office of today. If it fails to harmonize with its surrounding environment, however, it would just be one of many that stand there without any meaning.

The aim of the project is to rehabilitate an existing house and integrate two new single-family houses on the site. The two new houses reflect the character of the existing by their modern gabled roof. With a similar expression, the two adjust to the situation with a focus on view and light.