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In the belly of the beast

Shaped like a shark, the Mexico City house of architect Javier Senosiain Aguilar swims in a sea of organic fantasy

Raul Barreneche -- Interior Design, 6/1/2003 12:00:00 AM

If you thought biomorphic architecture had gone the way of avocado appliances and deep-pile shag, guess again. The kind of design that Bruce Goff and Paolo Soleri made popular in the U.S. in the 1970s is alive and well south of the border. In Vista del Valle, on the edge of Mexico City's sprawl, architect Javier Senosiain Aguilar's house returns to all things natural.

It also represents Senosiain's version of minimalism: not a polished white box but a reductivist primitive interior, with continuous surfaces curving from floor to walls to ceiling. "With furniture integrated into the architecture, you have maximum contact with the floor, the way campesinos in the countryside or people in Asia do," he explains. "It's a very physical sensation of freedom and spontaneity."

There are also sophisticated organicist antecedents: Goff, Soleri, and Frank Lloyd Wright as well as Antoni Gaudí, who looked to seashells, skulls, and sponges for formal inspiration. There's something futuristic about the house, too. Think of the Creature Cantina from Star Wars or the subterranean home of the Teletubbies.

Senosiain's home, which he shares with his wife, Paloma, and their daughters, looks like an enormous shark set into a hillside—the dorsal fin protruding from the roof eliminates any doubt. The front door is an oval copper panel set hobbit-style in a vine-draped recess in the shark's side. In the shark's gaping jaws, the curved window of Senosiain's upstairs studio overlooks the city. Another studio window, a small porthole, forms the shark's eye.

The ferro-cement construction was decidedly low-tech. Senosiain first outlined an undulating shape with a skeleton of closely spaced steel bars. He then covered this frame in two layers of chicken wire, one on top of the reinforcing bars, one beneath, and used a hose to spray on 2 inches of cement and water. "During construction, it looked like a skateboard ramp, but after it looked more polished, like an eggshell," he explains. Once the structure was in place, Senosiain coated above-ground portions of the exterior with polyurethane and UV-resistant elastomeric waterproofing.

He finished the 1,800-square-foot interior in a smooth stucco made of white cement, beige mortar, and marble dust. For the floor, he picked beige wall-to-wall, inviting that intimate contact between flooring and bare feet. To reinforce the connection between man and his most elemental shelter, shoes must be removed upon entry.

The ground floor of the shark functions primarily as a passageway. From here, a staircase ascends to the second floor—a womblike telephone niche built into the underside of the stucco-clad structure. Upstairs is Senosiain's studio, whose door is an abstraction of copper flower petals over vibrantly colored glass. Very Gaudí.

Beyond the staircase, the ground floor of the shark offers access to a tunnel. At the far end of this mysterious passage—illuminated by an unseen skylight—bedrooms and living spaces are half-buried underground in a 1,100-square-foot addition. The girls' bedroom lies below and to the right, the TV room above and to the left. In the living-dining room and adjacent open kitchen, vines creep in from a terrace and cover the ceiling, as if to underscore the architecture's organic provenance.

Save for a few rustic wooden stools and a cocktail table made from a sequoia trunk, almost all furniture is built-in. Bunk beds in the girls' room look carved from stone. Next to the steps leading to the top bunk is another niche, this one for curling up with a good book. Senosiain's minimalism also extends to hardware. You won't find many door pulls, because there are hardly any cabinets or drawers.

Senosiain's dexterity at using built-ins to maintain the interior's sinuous lines is best exhibited in the master suite, a swirling semi-subterranean space bathed in sunshine from a skylight and a glass door. The master bath is a grotto with a whirl- pool tub clad in malachite and a ferro-cement soaking tub that fills with water cascading from a lip built into the wall. The cantilevered ferro-cement sink vanity has built-in holders for toothbrushes and soap; a deer antler acts as a towel rack. In the master bedroom, cartoonlike cutouts framing closet niches impart a Flintstones air. A leather-cushioned cast-in-place ferro-cement bench spirals outward, like a nautilus shell, and turns into the bed, nestled in a curving wall. "The idea is to recline," says Senosiain, "like an animal in a cave."

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Vines creep along the ceiling of the living-dining room, into the open kitchen. The kitchen's counter and shelving are cast-in-place ferro-cement; the wooden stools were originally implements used to grind corn.

For an outdoor terrace and a second-floor studio, Javier Senosiain Aguilar designed Antoni Gaudí–esque doors of copper and glass.

The architect drives a prototype electric car of his own design.

The living-dining room's window wall looks back toward the shark.

Gaudí also inspired the skeletal shape of the column separating the living-dining room's fixed window from a glass door.

Senosiain's studio overlooks Mexico City through the shark's open jaws. The ferro-cement building is coated with polyurethane and UV-resistant elastomeric waterproofing.

In the master bedroom, a sweeping construction morphs from a bench into a bed platform.

The living area's sequoia cocktail table and gold-leafed hand-shape chair are among the few freestanding furnishings.

Senosiain designed his studio's laminated-plywood chairs.

A carpeted tunnel connects the shark house to the semi-subterranean addition.

The master bath's sink vanity combines a bamboo screen with a cast-in-place faucet and toothbrush holders.

A ferro-cement bunk bed in the girls' room.

The master bath's ferro-cement soaking tub. A skylight illuminates the tunnel.

The Senosiains' daughter Natalia in the telephone niche beneath the shark house's staircase.

Project team: Daniel Arredondo; Luis Raul Enriquez Montiel. Concrete: Latinoamericana de Concretos. Steel rods: Grupo Collado. Steel chicken wire: Aceros Nacionales. General contractor: Juan Sanchez Tiorras.