Ernesto Pugibet 70.

At a site in the heart of Mexico City’s historic center, Diverse was asked to perform a massing study to add residential, retail and office spaces to an existing landmarked residential building.  Additionally, the client’s charge was to respect to the extent possible the smaller scale density of the zone, while maximizing  the area to be added.  We proposed a series of options  based on the clients; requests and a preliminary zoning/code analysis for the property.

Since the existing facade needed to remain, we proposed options in which the facade remains in all cases, with different massing possibilities above.  The zoning in Mexico City  states that the footprint of historic buildings may be maintained rather than demolishing areas in order to provide the required lot coverage, therefore one line of investigation focused on this as an option.  Alternatively, since the existing structure is in very poor condition, we decided to accept the lot coverage requirements in the second line of investigation and use the resulting free area to our advantage to introduce green patio/atrium areas in order to separate the office/retail and residential programs.  Within this second line of study, we also included massing for a single “tower” above the historic base, as well as a two tower scheme that permitted the placement of the office program along the busy avenue with the access and frontage of the residential uses along the quieter street and facing a lush green park.