Parque Vía House by Soler Orozco Arquitectos (SOA) invites you into a verdant corner of Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma

Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma may be best known as one of the city’s major, historic thoroughfares, but as it climbs westwards, it transforms and incorporates a leafy, linear park where ash, eucalyptus and jacaranda trees offer abundant shade and shelter from both natural and manmade elements. It’s here that Parque Vía House, a family residence completed earlier this year by Soler Orozco Arquitectos (SOA), is located. Encased in an elegant, concrete structure, the Mexican house boasts slender volumes, a rhythmic organisation of windows, wooden shutters and marble sills that convey a transparency while highlighting the repetition of the facade. Surrounded by its own flowering garden and shielded from passing traffic by greenery, the verdant haven easily makes one green with envy.

‘What inspired the design was to create a house that sat in a garden that seemed to have always been there, while granting every space of the house its own relationship to it,’ says Juan Soler, the firm’s principal. ‘We brought the garden into most of the spaces and were able to include water features, double-height spaces and greenery into our design.’

Each room of the house blurs the line between interior and exterior, be it the entrance lobby with a single tree rising up through the double-height space and flanking the sculptural, winding staircase, to the open-air colonnade that faces a shallow reflecting pool. Even the garden exudes a similar quality, with landscaping overflowing from the central courtyard, blending the flowerbeds with plants that entwine upwards to connect the ground level with the green roof above the house’s reception room, which serves as a connection to the leafy canopy of the avenue, beyond the site itself. 

The statuesque composition of concrete, marble and lofty spaces means the house is well-ventilated and filled with natural light. Oriented around the reception room, the heart of the home where the clients can socialise with family and friends, the ground floor consists of an open-plan kitchen and multiple living areas, while the bedrooms are located upstairs. A separate gym and studio are located on the other side of the entrance lobby, and can be accessed via the terrace. 

‘The thinking behind the material palette was to use materials that are honest and authentic, whose qualities would help us bring light warmly into the house,’ says Soler. ‘We had a custom, warm light-grey coloured concrete designed for us, [that stays away from] falling into the white concrete category. We also chose natural oak in oil finishing, to expose the natural colour and texture of the grain, reflecting a warm light off their surface. Volcanic stones were chosen to bring out each other’s contrasting colour and texture.’

Throughout the home, well-considered details repeatedly unite form and function. The curvature of the staircase on the second floor, clad in vertical strips of Encino oak, offers an eye-catching contrast to the house’s otherwise linear design. Similarly, a round skylight embedded in the pitched roof filters soft, indirect light into the interior during both day and night for an ethereal effect at all times. Finished with large glass windows that can be opened to the outdoors, the Parque Vía House truly makes the case for tropical living. §

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