Between houses, colours and emotions
Spaces that live within us
Spaces that live within us
November 2026
Inspirations
I travelled to Mexico City after being invited to take part in the country’s Design Week. I took the opportunity to visit a few places I had been wanting to see for a very long time. The kind of places you add to a list of favourites on an ordinary Sunday afternoon.
Among them were several houses, of course. Casa Estudio and Casa Ortega, by Luis Barragán, and the Casa Azul, once home to Frida Kahlo. Now, as I write these words, I realise there is something rather curious about it all: those houses, which I had imagined for so long, have somehow become part of me. In a way, they now live within me.
There was something special about those walls. The lush gardens, the contrast between intimate spaces and others full of character. The way colour seemed to have a life of its own, as if it did more than simply occupy a surface, as though it could breathe and vibrate.
What struck me most about Barragán was his relationship with spirituality. The small altars scattered throughout the house, integrated with an almost domestic ease, made me think about how the sacred does not always need a solemn place in which to reveal itself. I was also surprised to find music players tucked away in different corners of the house. I liked the thought that, in order to fully understand a space, sometimes we also need to listen to it.
Everything seemed to reflect a very particular sensibility. A way of understanding architecture that went far beyond the functional. Places designed not only to be inhabited, but also to be felt and contemplated.
The Casa Azul captivated me for rather different reasons. Everything there seemed to speak of Frida. Of the way she saw the world, her imagination, and her need to create a space of her own where she could express herself freely, on her own terms.
I found myself thinking about how, after the accident that changed her life, the house had also become a window onto the outside world. A small, chaotic universe where everything her body sometimes prevented her from reaching seemed to find a place.
There was something special about those walls. The lush gardens, the contrast between intimate spaces and others full of character. The way colour seemed to have a life of its own, as if it did more than simply occupy a surface, as though it could breathe and vibrate.
What struck me most about Barragán was his relationship with spirituality. The small altars scattered throughout the house, integrated with an almost domestic ease, made me think about how the sacred does not always need a solemn place in which to reveal itself. I was also surprised to find music players tucked away in different corners of the house. I liked the thought that, in order to fully understand a space, sometimes we also need to listen to it.
Everything seemed to reflect a very particular sensibility. A way of understanding architecture that went far beyond the functional. Places designed not only to be inhabited, but also to be felt and contemplated.
