Rojkind Arquitectos is a Mexican architecture firm led by Michel Rojkind based in Mexico City. The firm explores uncharted geometries that address questions of common space, function, technology, materials, structure, and construction methods that are related directly to geography, climate, local urban experiences. The firm has achieved in developing a wide and ever-growing spectrum of design initiatives that range from intricacies in small objects to intricacies of large buildings and master plans.
The firm’s designs take full advantage of geographical context to help mitigate climatic conditions and integrate local efforts and launch them from a contemporary platform rooted in cultural traditions and the collective history of a nation. Their projects aim at creating catalytic social spaces that are detonators to community interactions that favor encounters, exchanges, interactions, and relationships making the experience a more meaningful one. They have tried to achieve theatrical qualities in their designs for industrial architecture.
Here are 15 projects by Rojkind Arquitectos :-
1. Tori Tori Altavista | Rojkind Arquitectos
Location: Mexico
Use: Restaurant
Status: Completed 2016
Partners: Rojkind Arquitectos + Esrawe Studio
The project is influenced by the historic architecture of caves and mountains and brutalist architecture style. The sense of compression and continuity that one experiences while walking inside a cave is achieved in this project with the variation in heights and narrow interiors that connect through a stairway to the upper levels which are surrounded by extroverted green spaces that frame views towards the treetops of the neighbouring houses. The use of marble interiors and high brass ceilings create a sense of continuity in the space and give it reflective qualities.
2. Foro Boca
Location: Boca Del Río, Veracruz, México
Use: Cultural centre
Status: Completed 2017
The project is set within a master plan that acts as an urban detonator inciting modernity to revitalize an urban area that is currently deteriorated. Located in the estuary of the river that provides the structure with a rich local context that is rich in its history and culinary tradition. Concrete is used to create various areas of volume that contain the most sophisticated concert hall in the country. The structure contains other programs like a cafeteria, restaurant, and a public area which consists of a three-story vestibule that combines floors and voids to create access to the halls. The structure provides for an extension of the access plaza throughout the breakwater area that creates spaces for entertainment and spontaneous activities.
3. Cineteca Nacional Siglo XXI | Rojkind Arquitectos
Location: Mexico
Use: Community Centre , Movie theatre
Status: Completed 2014
The project is a renovation of Mexico’s National Film Archive and Film Institute done to upgrade the existing campus in Xoco by Rojkind Arquitectos.The project reactivated the backstreet near the town’s cemetery by creating a pedestrian-friendly back entrance. The sheltered public area that accommodates the constant flow of pedestrians and casual visitors was achieved by consolidating the surface parking inside the structure into six stories. To achieve social interactions and cultural exchanges within the campus the architect has built amphitheaters , retail spaces and done extensive landscaping as additions to the campus’s programs.
4. Liverpool Insurgentes Department Store
Location: Mexico
Use: Department store
Status: Completed 2010
The project is a 10-foot-deep porous habitable façade extension to a department store that lies within the busy intersection of Insurgentes and Felix Cuevas avenues in the south of Mexico. It achieved giving a new identity to the typically closed retail store by transforming the standard department store into an active public space, inside and out. The deep wall system used in the façade blurs the lines between the inside and outside that give the user and passer-by an interactive experience along with habiting temporary functions within it that allow the dweller to navigate within the façade.
5. Transformadora CIEL | Rojkind Arquitectos
Location: Mexico
Use: Office , Private Houses
Status: Completed 2012
Partners: Rojkind Arquitectos + AGENT
The architect has transformed the unused terrace area [flat roof and helipad] to achieve a productive co-working space and surrounded it by green areas whilst reutilizing the existing structure. This sustainable project with its green roof provided with built-in rainwater harvesting systems, using reinvented recycled and low impact materials, clean technologies, and has achieved to minimize environmental damage. The interiors are cut-loose for a flexible configuration by providing customizable furniture like interchangeable modules that can be worked around according to the workflow requirements.
6. Mercado Roma
Location: Mexico
Use: Shopping Center , Supermarket , Restaurant
Status: Completed 2013
The project aims at reinterpreting the grid of traditional markets by incorporating vending stalls that are housed in an organic arrangement to achieve free flowing spaces on the street level. The upper levels house a restaurant and a roof deck. A fully functional vertical vegetable garden that is used to harvest, produce and sell them in the market is built in the open area of the structure creating a very refreshing environment inside the built environment.
7. High Park
Location: Mexico
Use: Residential
Status: Completed 2010
The building is built for the city of Mexico that is achieved by a dedicated public extension that integrates it with the pedestrian realm and therefore reinforces a sense of community. Shifting of floor plates to create a play of light and shadow whilst protecting from the intensive sun, provision of outdoor terraces that frame captivating views of the majestic Sierra Madre Oriental Range are some of the climate-responsive techniques used by the architect. Each apartment has a different configuration and layout that offers a wide range of internal distributions.
8. Nestle Chocolate Museum | Rojkind Arquitectos
Location: Mexico
Use: Chocolate Museum
Status: Completed 2007
The project was built to create a new image for Nestlé’s chocolate factory. The journey into the structure starts with a 634sq.m public space that accommodates the main entrance and further moves towards the reception area to the theatre, store, museum shop, and lastly to a passage to the tunnel inside the old existing factory. Rojkind Arquitectos was able to achieve a sensory expression with its complex organic form design that would attract children and intrigue them to explore the structure.
9. Kumoto
Location: Mexico
Use: Restaurant
Status: Completed 2018
Partners: Rojkind Arquitectos + Esrawe Studio
The success of the Tori Tori restaurants by Rojkind Arquitectos led to them creating a traditional Japanese restaurant concept and applying them in some of the restaurants projects they worked on later; Kumoto is one such project. Taking inspiration from the Bento Box in which food is placed inside wooden boxes the architect has applied the same concept to the walls and ceilings that are wrapped in saw oak veneer. Materials like wood and steel are used for enhancing the interior experience in specially designed furniture for the restaurant.
10. Nestle “Application Group” | Rojkind Arquitectos
Location: Mexico
Use: Cultural , Laboratory , Office
Status: Completed 2007
The project was worked along the design constraint of having portico with arches compulsorily as the site was the city’s historic centre which was declared as World Heritage Centre by UNESCO.The architects achieved this restriction by reinterpretation of both the porch and arch into the structure. The orthogonal form consists of intersecting spheres that have eaten up the interiors and hence created open and continuous spaces [a portico] in the structure. The complex spherical form was digitally fabricated and therefore had a quick and easy assembly on site.to achieve a theatrical experience the architect has given contrasting quality to the form, materials and colour in the structure.
11. Falcon Headquarters 1
Location: Mexico
Use: Office
Status: Completed 2003
The project was designed to achieve a welcoming sales center to portray the image of the high-tech business of the company Corporativo Falcon that sells medical equipment and instruments. The structure is a glass floating box whose glass skin help in focusing and enhancing the relationship between the interior and the exterior whilst it being a solid perimeter filtering the polarity between the two spaces. The porosity of the structure aims to serve illuminated views of the exteriors. The use of translucent, reflective materials and contrasting shades of colors helped in creating a virtual experience of the exteriors for the user.
12. Casa Rosario
Location: Mexico
Use: Single Family House
Status: Completed 2019
Partner: Rojkind Arquitectos + ROSA Studio
The house is conceived as a whole as four staggered volumes that rest on the ground and obey the topography of the site along with a central courtyard between them and a system of open-air outdoor paths that connects the interior programs and the exteriors in between the volumes. The interplay of the shadows as one voyage in between the volumes whilst providing shade is achieved in the outdoor passages that create a constant relationship between the spaces while walking.
13. PR34 House | Rojkind Arquitectos
Location: Mexico
Use: Residential
Status: Completed 2003
Located on a hillside the project is remodeling as well as an extension to the existing late 60’s house. The form represents a ballet dance composed of two bodies in motion with looping sensual forms that change angles coming out of every curve. The provision of separate entries for the old and the new extension made it easier for the architect to build independently. The apartment is divided into two halves, one half accommodates the kitchen dining, and living room while the other half is taken up by the master bedroom. The existing roof is concerted into a built terrace that consists of lava rocks, organ plant vegetation, and a lounging area.
14. Guerrero 108 Building
Location: Mexico
Use: Residential
Status: Completed 2018
Partners: Rojkind Arquitectos + VOX Arquitectura
Located in a deep and narrow dividing lot in the Guerrero neighborhood delimited by an avenue with high traffic, the project is a part of a social regeneration program of affordable housing within the limits of the urban fabric of the historic center of Mexico City. The building grants sunlight and views of the city’s skyline to the user with its interior courtyard that is reflected with that of the neighboring house. The use of low-cost materials and the provision of different types of apartments in the structure helps in achieving diversity and affordability to the inhabitants.
15. Amanali House | Rojkind Arquitectos
Location: Mexico
Use: Residential
Status: Completed 2017
The house was conceived as a weekend retreat with no clear boundaries between the interiors and the exteriors achieved through the glazed apertures. The project is designed with respect to its site context by building along with the topography of the site. Five prismatic volumes constructed of dark, porous locally sourced stones to represent boulders. The structure slopes downwards in the rectangular plot wherein one enters from the main entrance to the top level and further moves towards other functions downwards. Each volume consists of an individual program and is connected through outdoor pathways that create a beautiful visual experience of the exterior that offers views of the reservoir and the distant mountains.
