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Puerto House
TACO taller de arquitectura contextual

Project Name: Puerto House

Location: Progreso, Mexico

Design Team: TACO taller de arquitectura contextual

Total Floor Area: 95 m²

Completion: 2025

Photography: Paulina Góngora

 

Feature: TACO taller de arquitectura contextual's "Puerto House" demonstrates how innovative modular housing strategies and masterful historical preservation with contemporary architecture fusion techniques can transform a constrained 5x17-meter lot into an adaptable dual-unit coastal lodging building.

 

This 95-square-meter residence dramatically sits within the port area of Progreso, Yucatán, presenting itself as a profound exploration of compact urban living, coastal environment integration, and contemporary Mexican seaside lifestyle fusion. Rather than completely abandoning the original building's historical traces, it creates a living environment that seamlessly weaves industrial port aesthetics with Caribbean coastal experience through carefully considered interventions.

 

The project's most compelling design feature lies in its fundamental reimagining of traditional multi-family housing concepts. Two independent units connect through unprecedented flexibility, capable of merging into a single large space to accommodate different scales and configurations of occupancy needs. This adaptive modularity ensures dynamic transformation from traditional duplex housing to large gathering spaces, creating continuous dialogue between lodging architecture and user requirements.

 

TACO's design language fluently expresses dialogue between archaeology and contemporaneity, employing modern applications of historical elements like existing stone walls and antique doors to redefine spatial experiences. Salvaged original building components are innovatively integrated into new structures, serving both structural and symbolic functions. This bold historical reinterpretation not only adds authenticity and cultural depth to spaces but cleverly anchors the architecture within the port's industrial heritage.

 

Most remarkably, the architects create diverse experiences between different functional levels through clever manipulation of vertical organization and landscape strategy. The ground floor unit opens to a micro-coastal landscape garden featuring water elements, sand, and native vegetation, while the upper unit ascends via linear staircase to a spectacular rooftop terrace equipped with pool and barbecue facilities, enjoying panoramic views of the sea, boardwalk, pier, and lighthouse.

 

Material strategy continues this seamless integration of historical and contemporary design philosophy. Salvaged stone walls contrast with white concrete floors embedded with shells, while oceanic-toned pigmented stuccos, local cedar wood, and oxidized steel elements collectively create industrial port aesthetics. This artful material palette creates immersive sensory experiences for inhabitants, with every design element carrying site memory, cultural heritage, and profound coastal character.

 

Design Team - TACO taller de arquitectura contextual stands as a distinguished representative of contemporary Mexican architectural practice, established in Mérida, having secured a pioneering reputation in contextually responsive architectural design and interdisciplinary integration since its founding. This Yucatán-based practice redefines contemporary Mexican architects' role in international design discourse through vertical integration of architecture, urban design, interior design, landscape architecture, and furniture design.

 

TACO brings exceptional contextual analysis approaches and deep understanding of multidisciplinary collaboration to architectural practice. The practice has garnered recognition for its commitment to integrating traditional local crafts with contemporary Mexican modernism, with lead architect Carlos Patrón Ibarra being a distinguished graduate of Tecnológico de Monterrey who trained at renowned practices including AH Asociados in Spain and Reyes Ríos + Larraín arquitectos in Mexico. Co-founder Alejandro Patrón Sansor contributes structural engineering expertise from Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, and this combination of interdisciplinary education with international experience positions TACO uniquely within Mexico's architectural landscape.

 

The firm's design philosophy emphasizes that architecture should transcend surface form through contextual interpretation—designed not merely for formal aesthetics but to organically respond to site-specific conditions and community needs. Through sustainable material applications and innovative preservation approaches, working across diversified projects from residential and cultural to community architecture, they believe the best architecture results from precise interventions through comprehensive analysis of both tangible and intangible contextual factors. TACO believes architecture should serve as a carrier of local identity and social consciousness, creating place-based architectural experiences through strategic spatial organization and indigenous material applications.

 

Beyond practice, the firm maintains strong construction integration through close collaboration with local craftspeople—masons, carpenters, metalworkers, and glaziers. Through thoughtful integration of traditional construction wisdom with modern design methods, innovative applications of local materials, and time-tested cultural heritage, TACO has established itself as a significant contributor to contemporary Latin American architectural discourse, creating architectural works that are both locally rooted and embrace international design vision. The firm has received numerous international recognitions, including first place at the Quito Pan-American Biennial, Gold Medal at the Regional Architecture Biennial of the Southeast, Architectural Digest Icons of Design awards, and representation in the Venice Architecture Biennale's Mexican Pavilion.

95 m²

Progreso, Mexico

2025

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