In the Santiago neighborhood of Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico, a historic Yucatecan home called Casa Estrella has been renovated with a light touch that keeps the building’s past visible. The project by Atelier 16 focuses on preservation and reuse, holding onto the home’s original material character while adding carefully chosen new elements.
A key move came early in the layout. In the first bay, which holds the living room, kitchen, and dining area, a later partition was removed to restore a more open, continuous interior. Instead of covering up the existing stone masonry, the renovation leaves those walls exposed. Where the roof needed help, two slender metal beams were added for reinforcement, and the intervention was kept clear and readable alongside the older work.
Material choices continue that same balance. The kitchen pairs cedar woodwork with artisanal pasta mosaic tile and polished gray cement flooring. Deeper in the house, views extend to a swimming pool set within what remains of the existing structure. Here, the old walls keep their weathered finish, letting age and texture stay part of the space.
A central garden acts as the project’s connector, linking different areas through paths and dense vegetation. At the far end of the site, a new volume houses private rooms. An exterior staircase, finished by hand in cement tinted with black mineral powder, leads to a secondary bedroom and terrace. Bathrooms echo the home’s mix of rough and refined surfaces, combining exposed masonry with carved stone basins and polished gray cement walls and ceilings.
For mason contractors, Casa Estrella is a clean example of what “do no harm” can look like on a historic renovation. When a design team wants stone masonry exposed, every step matters, including demolition sequencing, protection of wall faces, and how new structural steel is detailed so it supports the building without visually overpowering it.
Read the full, original article from archisearch.gr here.