Tradition, use of local materials, and domesticity. Through two projects where simplicity is a recurring theme, Acrónimo studio has managed to interpret the rural character of the area around Montemorelos in Mexico and translate it into contemporary architecture.

The first half of the project, the Azahares residence, hosts the workers of the Tierra Madre camp. Here the architects reinterpreted the theme of the house, working on dividing the dwelling into three bodies. This operation has generated an outdoor patio that is the proper focus of the whole intervention. As all rooms can open an entire wall onto this space, the architecture results generating a snapshot of life in the area, where the use of materials underlines a domesticity of space while putting the roots of the project deep down in the spirit of the territory.

The second experiment was about facing the development of the Capilla San José: a religious space where once again the designers have explored the relationship between rituals and the reinterpretation of a historical typology. As a result, the small church is divided into three communicating volumes, alternating heaviness and lightness, generating compressions and dilations of space. Cement, stucco, and wood are juxtaposed clearly, producing a hierarchical and harmonious relationship between the parts.

In both projects, the spaces succeed in building a dialogue between interior and exterior, producing tension between architecture and landscape. The materials, always local, generate a domestic atmosphere while composing a vocabulary of contemporary solutions capable of reinterpreting tradition: the experience remarks how simplicity can reveal the true strength of spaces, where light, materials, and atmosphere return to the center of the architectural experience.