Self-confining in a private fortress is one of the possible strategies to escape the megalopolis’s visual, acoustic and social chaos. The Zicatela House, built by Ludwig Godefroy on the Mexican coast, in the vicinities of Puerto Escondido, serves this precise purpose. The project is conceived in the first place to minimize the “noise” to which its inhabitants are subject. The Zicatela House has no cladding, nor any decoration. All of the surfaces, both horizontal and vertical, are made of fair faced concrete, as terse as it is expressive thanks to the formworks' imperfections. Their only counterpart are the dark brown pieces of woodwork, such as doors and window shutters, both reduced to their nearly primitive, pre-industrial variant.
A fortress house in Puerto Escondido as a break from the megalopolis
Ludwig Godefroy’s Zicatela House, in Puerto Escondido, is an introverted architecture, involving its inhabitants in a complex game of crossing perspectives.
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, ground floor plan
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, roof plan
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, sections
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, sections
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- Alessandro Benetti
- 20 January 2020
- Puerto Escondido, Mexico
- Ludwig Godefroy
- 300 sqm
- holiday house
- 2018
In the words of Godefroy, the Zicatela House “has a very interesting personality of being a countryside house next to the sea, instead of a beach house”. And yet, in reality, this architecture seems to reject both landscapes surrounding it (the Ocean and the countryside), possibly because they are also considered as a source of distraction. On the ground floor, dwellers move through a decidedly dense domestic enclosure, featuring the juxtaposition of few, simplified elements: the rooms’ volumes, diversely rotated and connected; the fragments of a garden where scattered palm trees rise; a water basin where to bathe, rather than swim; the memory of ancient pyramids, their steps framing the house’s open spaces. On this level, the combination of solids and voids results in several crossing perspectives, while the view never crosses the sound boundary wall, except towards the sky. Introspection might easily lead to referent-free narcissism, but an elevated terrace allows to regain a larger horizon, freeing explorers from the game of mirrors where they willingly isolated themselves.
- Zicatela House
- holiday house
- Puerto Escondido, Mexico
- Ludwig Godefroy
- 300 sqm
- 2018
Ludwig Godefroy, Zicatela House, Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2018