Toronjos
Toronjos is a minimalist vacation home located in State of Mexico, Mexico, designed by PPAA. The architectural imperative to reduce environmental impact while maximizing experiential connection has rarely found such elegant resolution. PPAA’s approach to this 312-square-meter retreat demonstrates how material authenticity and spatial restraint can produce architecture that enhances rather than dominates its terrain. The project emerges from a fundamental rethinking of the vacation home typology – not as imported object but as landscape intervention that amplifies existing ecological and phenomenological qualities of place.
Staggered perimeter walls establish the home’s organizing logic. Rather than creating conventional enclosure, these elements function as calibrated thresholds that modulate relationships between interior occupation and surrounding topography. Large openings punctuate the protective barriers, transforming them into framing devices that choreograph views while maintaining thermal and spatial comfort. The strategy recalls Luis Barragán’s manipulation of planes to structure landscape perception, though here the emphasis shifts from chromatic drama to material continuity with site.
The single-level plan prioritizes what PPAA identifies as social and contemplative occupation over programmatic complexity. Communal spaces open directly to landscape, while hammock zones create dedicated areas for stillness and observation. This spatial hierarchy reflects shifting patterns of domestic leisure – the vacation home conceived not as activity center but as platform for environmental awareness and temporal decompression.
Material selection reinforces the project’s ecological positioning. Adobe production occurred on-site, establishing direct material lineage between building and ground. Wooden beam structures remain exposed, their joinery and grain patterns visible as evidence of regional craft traditions. The handcrafted adobe floor and plaster wall finishes create surfaces that absorb and reflect light differently throughout the day, their earthy pigmentation harmonizing with the surrounding palette of oxidized soil and native vegetation.