Arbolada

BELLAVISTA

Apartment Complex

MExico City, Mexico

1986

Much more recent than the other works gathered here are the mid-range apartment buildings on Arbolada Bellavista street, in Ciudad Satélite. The site where they stand is exceptional: just behind the buildings, a cut hillside — which helped enlarge the plot — rises with its sharp rocks emerging and taking form in the sunlight, creating a backdrop of remarkable texture, full of shadow and reverberation. On the other side of the street, a green and leafy golf course completes this privileged setting.

The Arbolada Bellavista apartments are an ode to the capacity of combining a single module to create diversity, while simultaneously individualizing each unit and endowing the complex with solid coherence and unity. In this development, brown-toned plaster finishes are combined, shifting from one wall to the next, with volumes that project outward clad in beautiful quarry stone. The variations in surfaces — born from window frames or small balconies, the small stone cylinders embedded in the walls, and the different planes of the façades — give this complex an always-shimmering quality.

Matiana Gonzales Silva Text

Fabio Foresti Photography

Imagen en blanco y negro de un edificio con ventanas rectangulares y un arco en la parte inferior derecha.
Plano arquitectónico en negro y blanco de una estructura residencial con varias habitaciones y áreas comunes.
Plano arquitectónico de un edificio de varios pisos con ventanas y puertas en un fondo negro.
Edificio con paredes de color amarillo y blanco, ventanas cuadradas y decoración en forma de triángulos, rodeado de jardines con arbustos y árboles, en un día soleado con cielo azul.
Edificio de apartamentos con fachadas en tonos terracota y amarillo, varias ventanas y balcones, rodeado de jardines y árboles en la tarde.
Edificio de apartamentos de color gris y rojo con árboles y arbustos en primer plano, cielo nublado.

Seen from one of its extremities, the Arbolada Bellavista complex seems to undulate, as if it had borrowed from the hillside the vibration born of the stones. It is a place that stimulates and invites one to observe how light falls and how a single color transforms into different tones. An intense desire for individuality led Miguel Ángel Aragonés to design each apartment with certain variations, while on the top floor of each building he placed two penthouses — wonderful spaces where the living area has the highest ceiling, a large window looking out onto the golf course, and a staircase leading up to the rooftop, which can be enjoyed as a terrace.

Meanwhile, at the front of the complex, cars park on cobblestones with grass growing between them, and set slightly apart sits a swimming pool where the children can swim on Sundays.

Edificio moderno de colores amarillo y blanco con ventanas grandes y formas arquitectónicas distintivas, en un entorno con césped y pequeños árboles.
Fachada de un edificio con paredes en colores amarillo, blanco, naranja y azul, con ventanas rectangulares y un arco en la parte inferior derecha.

PRoject DEtails

  • Miguel Angel Aragonés

  • Mauricio Rivera

  • Ricardo Pérez-Saravia, Fabio Foresti

  • Mexico city, Mexico