GGG House

GGG House in Mexico City, Mexico by Albert Kalach

Revisiting a project featured on this page about four years ago, the GGG House by Alberto Kalach (with Daniel Alvarez) is a complex design of concrete and light, inspired by the work of artist Jorge Yazpik, who has three sculptures placed in reflecting pools about the house. Both the sculptures and the house carve openings into mass, an intricate interrelationship of solid and void, each finding release in its surroundings.

For the house, the release is its rear yard. From the solid presence at the street and entry, through the maze-like interior of tight corridors and glass bridges, to the living area overlooking the yard, this is a movement from dark to light, mass to air. Sliding glass panels at two sides of the living room bring the yard into the house, and vice-versa. Along this route fraught with existential meaning, one receives glimpses of the house and surroundings via slender openings in the thick concrete walls, while more substantial glazing is open to the reflecting pools and sculptures.

But Kalach doesn't express the carving too literally in the house's interior surfaces. Rather, he varies the textures and formation of the concrete, while also adding stone and wood to the mix for further refinement and roughness, respectively. When glass is used, in many cases it is mullionless to almost disappear. In these and other details, the house recalls the great Carlo Scarpa, whose Villa Ottolenghi is equal parts grotto and house and an experiment in texture; in many ways it is a precursor to the GGG House.

With the great expense required to design and construct a custom single-family house, it is no surprise that many clients are art collectors, an equally money-necessary pastime. But whereas most house designs may only use the walls for the art, GGG House is actually physically designed around the art. Pockets in the house's mass then aren't only corridors, kitchens, bathrooms, etc., but spaces specifically for the sculptures. So ultimately the carving of the house acts to explain and further the exploration of space in Yazpik's sculptures, at a greater scale and with the purpose of function.