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Casa de Jardines Amurallados
Median Range
Casa Escondida
Courtyards House
Bosques Apartments
Cetys University
Catalana Remodel









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117 Dobbin Street
2nd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11222

Calle German Gedovius 10411
No. 304
Tijuana, Mexico 22520

info@studiohuerta.com

Casa de Jardines Amurallados
Valle de Guadalupe, Baja California, Mexico
2023





More info coming soon.


Status
Completion 2024

Project Team
Gabriel Huerta, Ruta Misiuna, Meghna Mudaliar

Project Consultants
(Structural Engineer) Eme Cubo, (Mechanical Engineer) HVAC Mechanical Tijuana, (Electrical Engineer) PYME, (Facade Consultant) Grupo Basica



Median Range

New York, New York
2018





The medians of Park Avenue describe a unique setting in one of the most emblematic thoroughfares of New York City. For over a century, these modest strips of real estate have evolved into an urban gallery, creating changing displays of plantings and art visible from adjacent streets and sidewalks.

Median Range interprets and amplifies the natural and horticultural history of Park Avenue, transforming the medians from display platform into veritable public space. By lifting the ground of the centerlines, an undulating landscape of planted slopes and banks describes a second skyline set against the backdrop of Park Avenue’s commercial district. A series of gestural contours carve out interior and exterior rooms inside this new topography, creating an urban promenade both intimate and exposed, protected from adjacent traffic yet open to surrounding views.





Plan: 46th - 49th St.


Plan: 49th - 53rd St.


Plan: 53rd - 57th St.








Status
Design Competition

Project Team
Gabriel Huerta, John McMahon, Tyler Napolitano, Angelos Palaskas

Casa Escondida
Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, Mexico
2020





Located off the desert coast of Los Cabos, Casa Escondida is a project of multiplicities. Mediating between complex and competing demands imposed by climate, program, and neighborhood regulations, the design overlays strategies of disguise and duality to construct the concept of a house within a house.

The discreet exterior displays a compliant structure, conforming to the requisite roof type, limited apertures, and stone cladding stipulated by community guidelines, while inside, architectural freedoms of form and materiality unfold. Carved out of the house’s conceptual massing, a composition of voids creates a second, protected exterior space; a courtyard covered by skylights that tilt and taper at different angles to produce variations in daylighting and natural ventilation. Living and sleeping rooms encircle the courtyard across two floors, weaving together and through the central void to connect the house’s interiors with the space and shade of the cloistered breezeway.



















Status
Completed 2020

Project Team
Gabriel Huerta, Daisy Ames, Arshia Gharib, John McMahon, Angelos Palaskas

Project Consultants
(Structural Engineer) Ing. Jacobo Perez Valle - MGA Calculo, (Facade Consultant) Grupo Basica, (Mechanical Engineer) Grupo Softair, (Pool) Hidroequipos Albercas, (Storm Protection Systems) RS Los Cabos, (Interiors and Finishes) Intermark

Photography
Roland Halbe

Center for Postgraduate Studies, Cetys University

Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico
2016





2017 Architizer A+ Awards Winner: Architecture +Sustainability, Jury and Popular Vote

The Center for Postgraduate Studies establishes a new academic and social center at Cetys University's flagship Mexicali campus, embodying the vision of an institution dedicated to shaping a new culture for expanding and sharing knowledge throughout Baja California.

Located in the arid climate of the Sonoran Desert, along the San Andreas fault line, the building stands as a fortified block that protects against earthquakes and high temperatures. The solid mass of the building wraps around the southeast and west sides with a layered exterior shell and built earthen topography insulating against the sun, whereas to the north the structure and landscape open to connect with the central campus quad. The thick exterior walls house the building’s seismic structure and help isolate interior and exterior temperatures, and an expanded aluminum screen offset from the perimeter envelops the building, creating an additional layer that allows for natural air circulation and reduced heat gain.

The building’s interior organization is predicated upon the interaction of two distinct spatial zones, creating a strategic composition of public and private spaces that simultaneously enable passive ventilation. An enclosed, private zone of classrooms, offices, and study areas interlocks with an open, public zone made up of various social spaces, producing a vibrant interplay of transparency and opacity as well as a continuous dialogue of spatial uses. A spiraling of hallways across the building’s three floors allows for both pedestrian and air circulation. The central atrium is not only a major social hub, but also the largest of various thermal centers that culminate in a system of solar chimneys designed to cool the building’s interior.















Building Layers

(top)

Screen
Expanded aluminum mesh and fiberglass grating for shading and ventilation.

Shell
Double-wall construction with airspace for structural housing and thermal isolation.

Structure
Structural steel with seismic bracing.

Enclosure
Interior partitions, curtain walls, and windows, defining total ventilated volume and connected to solar chimney system.

Ground
Hypar topography, split ground level, and terraced circulation.

(bottom)


Two Spatial Zones

Solid / Private Space: Classrooms, offices, special media rooms, enclosed circulation. Defines areas of air intake via windows or mechanical system.

Void / Public Space: Building entries, circulation, social centers. Spatiothermal connection between interior and exterior. Thermal exhaust via stacked ventilation and solar chimney system. 
 










Status
Completed 2016

Project Team
Gabriel Huerta, Kevin Murray, Angelos Palaskas

Project Consultants
(Structural Engineer) Ing. Manuel Rojas Guzman - Ingeneria Integral Estructural, (Mechanical Engineer) Ing. Luis Vilchis - Simsa and Grupo Softair, (Landscape Design) Jorge Almaraz - Green Desert, (Facade Consultant) Grupo Basica, (Acoustics) Ing. Roberto Velasco - Soluciones Acusticas, (Building Envelope) Jeff Jensen, (Shades) Persianas Paldi and Karina Oliver, (Interior Glass) King Window, (Metalwork) Promotinox

Photography
Roland Halbe

Catalana Remodel
Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico
2015





Located in the elevations of Tijuana’s hillside developments, this remodel of a revivalist house constitutes a renovation and addition in the manner of an architectural amalgam.

The original home, constructed in the 1980s, typifies the suburban residential design of its time - a hybridized composition of informal, open floor plans interspersed with historical, decorative elements and motifs. Along with the need for additional space and a new detached home office, the project begins with a desire to create more immediate and variegated connections to the outdoors, as well as a renewed sense of form, space, and material expression.

Columns and pilasters with classical decoration are stripped to bare form, arched drop ceilings are transformed into planar surfaces, floor levels are simplified and consolidated, and a new material palette is defined to carry light through interior spaces and create continuity between interior and exterior. Limestone, regional cantera stone, smooth plaster, and walnut are utilized in addition, renovation, and new construction alike. New window and door openings, formally echoing the house’s existing apertures, are introduced to create visual and physical links to outdoor terraces and a newly reformed garden. In every instance, added space is delimited by the physical contours of the original house; by creating spatial and figural relationships with existing elements, two contrasting projects are ultimately assimilated through formal dialogue.





Existing west facade


    Existing north facade














Status
Completed 2015

Project Team
Gabriel Huerta, Angelos Palaskas

Project Consultants
(Structural Engineer) Ingeneria Estructural y Urbana 33, (Associate Architect) Liliana Alvarez de Lutteroth, (Exterior Finishes) Jeff Jensen, (Facade Consultant) Vidrio y Aluminio Magaña

Photography
Brady Architectural Photography

© Studiohuerta 2024