Mérida, Yucatán – Mexico

The project consists of the study of the transformation into a hotel of a protected colonial house in the historic center of the city of Mérida. This architecture is characterized by a recurring typology of alignment of the building with the street, on one floor, central courtyard surrounded by rooms and backyard of greater or lesser size depending on the possibilities of the plot. On a constructive level the ceilings are of considerable height and the thick stone walls, with ceramic paste floors and interesting woodwork on doors and lattices.

The proposal seeks to alter the existing distribution minimally, based on the repetition of structural boxes of different sizes, adding a newly constructed body with two floors in the rear of the building to accommodate more rooms. In the old part the rooms are housed in the existing rooms, the bathrooms are conceived as wooden furniture within each historical space, of lower height, clearly differentiating the existing from the new. In the case of the ski lift the strategy is similar, it seeks to counter the existing wall and tectonic structure to a light element, with running balconies, sliding shutters of wooden slats and clamped with metal parts. At the level of interior finishes, original floors and artistic elements are maintained, using continuous polished concrete flooring, smooth cedar wood and white hydraulic tiles for all the additions to which the intervention forces us.