Founded in Mexico City more than 40 years ago by architect Miguel Ángel Aragonés, Taller Aragonés is a small, architecture studio whose work has transcended borders to become one of the most singular voices in contemporary Mexican architecture.

Miguel Ángel Aragonés began his career at the age of twenty in the social housing sector, developing more than a dozen buildings in the capital before formally establishing the studio. Self-taught by conviction, Aragonés always remained outside conventional academic currents, forging a language entirely his own that, while acknowledging the legacy of masters such as Luis Barragán and Ricardo Legorreta, evolved into a completely original sensibility. Throughout his career he has designed many residential homes, buildings, and apartments.

The Team

True to its intimate scale, Taller Aragonés operates today as a small, cohesive studio. Its members have worked together for more than 16 years, ensuring a shared vision and deep coherence across every project. The studio is composed of Rafael Aragonés Caballero, the founder's son and an architect trained at Universidad Iberoamericana, who joined the studio in 2010 and has collaborated on large-scale projects such as Casa Pi; and José Torres and Óscar Vélez, pillars of the team whose experience and longevity stand as testament to the work ethic that defines the studio.

Design Philosophy

The architecture of Taller Aragonés is grounded in the belief that space must do more than function — it must be felt. For the studio, architecture only fulfills its true purpose when it transcends the utilitarian and enters the realm of memory and sensitivity, leaving a lasting emotional imprint on those who inhabit it. Every project is conceived not merely as a built object, but as an experience: a sequence of spaces capable of evoking emotion, anchoring memory, and engaging the senses in ways that endure long after the first encounter.

At Taller Aragonés, every space is architecturally resolved from structure to interior design. The studio approaches each project as a total work, where structural decisions, material choices, light, proportion, and furnishings are considered as parts of a single, coherent whole.

The studio works across planes that inhabit the realm of sensitivity, creating monolithic and rationalist forms that engage with their surroundings rather than imposing upon them. The exterior is never a secondary element: it is integrated into each project as a constitutive part of the spatial experience, allowing the landscape to invade the interiors and volumes to open toward the horizon. This philosophy is taken to an uncommon extreme — Aragonés often personally inhabits newly completed homes for one to two years, fine-tuning the relationship between technology and everyday life until a satisfying equilibrium is achieved.

Notable Projects

Among the studio's most recognized works are the Hotel Encanto in Acapulco, defined by its white minimalist geometry and chromatic LED lighting; the Hotel Mar Adentro in San José del Cabo, with its signature reflecting pool and contemporary massing; the Rombo IV complex in Bosques de las Lomas, Mexico City; and Casa Pi, a prefabricated aluminum housing prototype — the first of its kind in the world — that can be assembled in 45 days, with an international patent registered in Switzerland.

Publications

The studio's work has been published in hundreds of architecture magazines across Russia, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and beyond. In 2008, Editorial Landucci published a monograph on their work. In 2012, the prestigious New York publisher Rizzoli released an English-language monograph bringing together photography and academic writings by Aragonés himself. The studio also holds a monograph published by L'Arca, distributed in France, Germany, Italy, Norway, England, the United States, and China.

In October 2020, Rizzoli published Miguel Ángel Aragonés: Reinventing Minimalism — the studio's fifth monographic book and its second volume with the publisher. With texts by renowned architecture critic Philip Jodidio, the 288-page hardcover features eleven of the studio's most emblematic residences and interiors, exploring Aragonés's modernist sensibilities and his signature aesthetic: uncluttered all-white spaces during the day that transform at night through cinematic neon lighting into an entirely different emotional experience.

Awards & Recognition

Taller Aragonés has been recognized on multiple occasions at the international level. In 2006, the studio received the IALD & ELDA Award (International Association of Lighting Designers / European Lighting Designers Association) for the lighting design of Casa Eucaliptos 65. Hotel Encanto received a Merit Award from the IALD International Lighting Design Awards. In 2014, Condé Nast México named Miguel Ángel Aragonés Architect of the Year. In 2018, he was appointed Professor of the International Academy of Architecture (IAA) in Sofia, Bulgaria, in recognition of his contribution to the development of contemporary architecture. He has been invited to lecture at the College of Architects of Navarre and Bilbao, the Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA) in Long Beach, California, and the ERA Forum in Copenhagen, Denmark.

More than four decades after its founding, Taller Aragonés remains a benchmark of Mexican architecture: small in scale, expansive in ideas.