The shelter that can end the shortage of water from the State of Mexico reaping rain
El agua ha empezado a caer pasadas las tres de la tarde y golpea el suelo con fuerza. El arquitecto Javier Sánchez (Ciudad de México, 51 años) se ha refugiado en el interior de su casa, donde ha recibido a su equipo de trabajo. Hacia el este, debería verse el Nevado de Toluca, el cuarto volcán más alto de México, pero las nubes lo cubren todo. Es temporada de lluvias en esta parte del hemisferio. Sánchez ha diseñado esta casa en la montaña para aprovechar ese agua que cae de forma natural en una zona que sufre un desabastecimiento crónico. Las precipitaciones se recuperan gracias a un sistema que recoge, filtra y almacena. El agua que beben, el agua que sale de los grifos, el agua de los baños es la que la misma casa ha cosechado.
Housing is part of 200 hectare real estate development where 80 houses will be built.To get from the access of the complex to Sánchez's house you have to climb about 250 meters through dirt roads.In the surroundings you can see grasslands, pines, holm oaks and fruit trees.And although there they have their actors and chefs charts recognized these are barely divided.Half of the territory has been converted into a nature reserve and the rest can only be built 6% and up to five and a half meters high.
The complex, located in the México Valley Basin, almost three hours from the capital, aims.It has about 13 reserves that collect rain and provide 30% of the water used by each of the houses.But Sánchez has designed his so that he captures all he needs.
Made of wood painted black and volcanic stone called the enclosure, the house remembers the mies van der rohe pavilion: a horizontal plane high below which the rest seems to float.The windows can open until different spaces disappear and configure.The project, opened in 2020, was designed by Sánchez in collaboration with American architect Robert Hutchison.The house aims to be a shelter, a cabin on the mountain, for Sánchez, his wife and his two daughters 24 and 21 years old.It also has an independent study to receive visits or work and a space dedicated to water, such as a “temple” with hot springs, sauna and steam.
Inside the main building there is a large kitchen, a small living room with a library, a dining room, two bedrooms, a living room to watch television and a bathroom.Outside, there is a garden that at this time gives potatoes, lettuce, aromatic herbs and different fruits.And there are also two terraces.Even if it's cold, the house invites you to be out.The terrace that is accessed to the house is organized around a fireplace.The other has a table in which up to 20 people enter.
From there you see a small artificial lake that keeps up to one million liters of water.With the first rains of the season, the water begins to run and can be captured.Two main channels conduct rainfall below the ground to the pool, where they are stored.The ring around this pot is a kind of wetland that helps sediment the land that brings the water and does a previous cleaning job.Practically does not require maintenance.A part of that water is used for consumption and an important part evaporates."A beautiful principle of water is that the more water there is, the more moisture there is and the more rain there is," says the architect.In drought time the level can drop 30%.
A few meters from there there are a room of hidden machines underground that receives water directly from the rain and stores it in three tanks.Then it is purified and saved in two other containers.From there it passes home and, after being used - without chemicals, such as bleach - returns: it passes through a treatment plant, it is filtered, it is cleaned, the bad smell is removed and the color a little, and it isuse again in bathrooms and for irrigation.That is, for the system to work, the house has to be inhabited.
Sánchez, who in addition to architect is a professor, thought the project to be didactic.The house, he says, "is a laboratory and a school".For him, small projects, "almost as acupunctures", can solve the water shortage problems of Mexico City and other municipalities.The Cutzamala system, which provides water to the capital, has suffered the overexploitation of a city that continues to expand.In April, the city head of the city, Claudia Sheinbaum, announced that she planned to build a new water treatment plant to supply the capital from other nearby water sources.At that time, water only filled 42.9% of the capacity of the dam, 23 points less than in the same month of the previous year.
This home has been a turn in Sánchez's career, which until now had done, above all, urban projects - the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale for a social housing project -.That turn began about five years ago, in part, inspired by their daughters, who are activists "against everything that is wrong," says the architect.The whole family became vegan.He started running - he began the Marathon of Rome with sandals like those used by the Tarahumara people, although designed by an American brand called Luna Sandals - and went down 30 kilos."I still believe in the city, of course, but I think you have to build it with another logic," he says and points out that such a system is replicable in the cities.