A concrete façade shaped by light and Mexican winds

The new apartment complex designed by Jorge Urias Studio in the prestigious residential estate of Real de Las Torres in Ciudad Juárez stands out like an ever-changing monolith in explicit contrast to the adjacent constructions inspired by Eurpoean references through the sole presence of arches, mouldings and rustications.
The intervention increases the housing stock in the area, offering 24 one-bedroom flats distributed in two three-level buildings. Each building is composed of two L-shaped volumes, arranged around a common central courtyard where the staircase is located, and staggered so as to break up and animate the rigorous quadrilateral planivolumetric layout.

But it is above all in the façade that the work acquires its own particular identity, finding in the straightforwardness of the structure, in the plasticity of the volumes and in the manipulation of the form to achieve an emotional effect, with its lines inspired by a certain hint to both Brutalism and Expressionism.

Based on a set of skills ranging from architectural planning to design and art, and a particular sensitivity to the expressive potential of materials, the studio has interpreted the building fronts as living matter modelled by the sun and the wind, independent of the internal layout and freed from the formal habits of ordinary residential constructions.

A system of undulating load-bearing panels of exposed concrete cast in situ, coloured red in homage to the bright Mexican chromatic palette, acts as an external structural skeleton and dynamic skin that, interacting with light, generates dramatic chiaroscuro effects that change during the day. The variable pace of the curvilinear texture – denser at the bottom, more dilated towards the top – dictates the irregular rhythm of the openings and suggests an upward tension, which seems to want to dilute the full-bodied materiality of the building towards the sky.