Located in the historic downtown of Morelia city, Mexico - two blocks away from one of the most emblematic public squares in the area: Las Rosas -, the project approach began when the client wanted to turn an abandoned wine cellar of 8.00 x 40.00 meters, into a gastronomic market. When we met the old warehouse, we like the idea, but most of all we liked the silence that was felt (uncommon quality in the downtown of a Mexican city), we also thought it was a good opportunity to combine our language with the architectures of the past and to explore the relationship and the dialectic between both.

That cellar has an interesting background: in the middle of the 16thcentury, worked as the backyard and winery of the house from a wealthy family of the time. However, over time, reforms, ownership changes and different uses of the place, some several modifications took place that cause the space to lose its essence. The roof was covered with aluminum sheet, and the quarry walls were flattened with cement, and marbled floor was placed…very characteristic of the 60s. We thought that the place had lost its soul and didn’t belong to its context.

The design process began by identifying the most popular and crowded food places in the area. We discover that the public squares were the places where people concentrated to eat; either in a nearby restaurant, on the terraces or simply on a bench in the square itself.

From there, we identified some compositional elements of these places: the axes, the routes, the volumes, the opening to the sky, the trees, the use of natural materials, that we interpreted and incorporated them in our design. In the case of the floors and the walls, we eliminate the new modifications and the wall’s coating, revealing the original quarry and creating a similar atmosphere to the one of these squares so that the market attendees felt in a familiar, easy and natural place.

Everything antique with architectural value was rescued, and the new would formally and materially have a different nature: a white and defined nature that would demonstrate its own presence, and its own historical and conceptual moment. With this, we would try to achieve a balance between the new and the old, and to allow its own expression. 

A tree-lined central avenue was drawn, flanked by two white large volumes that take advantage from the space’s length -which houses the establishments-. On each of these, two other transversal volumes were assembled in inverted “L” shape, which serve to cover an area of tables on ground floor, and to create terraces at the top. However, its most important function is to frame, without exclusion, the different layers of architectural history, left over the centuries. Also, it is meant to intersect the light and space in a way that their presence is emphasized, and they become intangible protagonists of the place.