TRENDS
On his tireless mission to create beauty through space and light, architect Miguel Ángel Aragonés has created a visual masterpiece in Mexico City
Interior lighting design like you’ve never seen it before
With a passion for light and form, architect Miguel Ángel aragonés has dedicated a lifetime – almost 38 years – to the exploration of spaces, particularly in terms of the perception of beauty within geometry. This, his recently completed rombo IV house, in Mexico city, is perhaps his most daring statement yet: part manifesto on the quiet power of spatial composition, part chromatic symphony that borders on the spiritual. The home forms part of a larger residential project comprising four buildings – including Miguel’s workshop – that today serve as a testament to the architect’s unfaltering obsession with refining even the most micro of details to achieve complete interior purity. For Miguel, there is no division between interior architecture, furniture and decor; instead, these elements are merged into one concept – take the dining room table, for example, an elegant flat plane that simply extends from the wall.
‘In essence, this is a hyper-artisan home, where the furniture is part of the architecture and the architecture is part of the furniture.
Importantly, light also travels freely between the volumes, transforming the home into a larger-than-life lightbox,’ says Miguel. ‘sometimes, you’d think you’re looking at a model, much like in the photographic works of Thomas demand that have this sense of enigma, of things not adding up until you realise what you’re looking at. similarly, this space has that surreal feeling, of being both strange and yet completely familiar, like the feeling of déjà vu.’ Miguel goes on to quote Michelangelo, saying ‘man is nothing else but what he sees, what he hears and what he lives.
That information is processed and, later, he thinks he has discovered the golden thread when all he is doing is recreating the experience.’
The ground floor volumes present themselves along a central access corridor: a patio, living and dining rooms, kitchen, yoga studio, cinema and service areas. The middle level contains four en suite bedrooms and a private lounge. Finally, the uppermost level is reserved for entertainment and recreation and includes a pool, sundeck and outdoor kitchen facilities.
It is at dusk, in the gloaming light, that the house sheds its monastic, bone-white appearance, bursting into a dynamic, polychromatic light show. By inserting stained glass into the walls, Miguel has found a way to animate the architecture in the traditional Mexican medium of colour, but this time instead of paint it is light that he uses to pay homage to the country’s pioneering architects. ‘Mexico is colour, and the Mexican architecture that interests me is colourful,’ he says. ‘Barragán was such a lover of roses, yellows and purples that today it is almost as if he invented those shades. similarly, Legorreta also possessed an impressive capacity for colouration. What these architects achieved in flat planes we have done with light, which means the pigments have become infinite. Light becomes the space, and the space becomes colour.’
Moving through the spaces of rombo IV generates a mix of emotions: a sense of protection, isolation and harmony. ‘architecture is the search for space in accordance with light within which to live surrounded by beauty,’ says Miguel. ‘My obsession is what I consider beautiful. If 95 per cent find it scary, that’s fine. I don’t look for universality; I look only to stay true to my ideology.’ What is irrevocable is that Miguel has created a harmonious refuge, in line with the light and the environment, through which the legacy of Mexico’s architects is powerfully – and simply – illuminated.
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