Zona Arquitectura Más Ingeniería Pairs Stone, Brick and a Glass Lantern in a Jalisco Country House

Herradura House sits in a country-style residential subdivision south of Zapotlán el Grande, the municipality that holds Ciudad Guzmán in southern Jalisco. The site looks toward the Colima volcanic massif, the kind of view that tempts architects to dissolve the whole house into glass. Zona Arquitectura Más Ingeniería, with Jorge A. Barrientos Soto as architect in charge, completed the 295 m² single-family home in 2017. They resisted that temptation, mostly. The glass is concentrated in one gridded, double-height volume, and everything around it is heavy.

What we find interesting is the discipline of the material palette. Rubble stone, red brick and board-formed concrete each get their own wall and their own role, and none of them is asked to imitate the others. The result reads as a small assembly of distinct pieces rather than a single sculpted object. On a suburban lot of manicured lawn and planters, that separation is what gives the house its weight and its legibility.

Three Materials, Three Jobs

Walk around the exterior and the logic becomes clear. The rough stone wall acts as the anchor, the most grounded and least refined surface, closest in spirit to the volcanic terrain on the horizon. The red brick volume is more domestic and precise, with a tall dark-framed window punched cleanly into it. The board-formed concrete carries the timber grain of its formwork and frames the corner where the glass begins.

The junctions are where the design is honest. Brick meets stone without a trim piece or a transitional render; each material simply stops. Afternoon shadow cutting across the brick and stone, as in the side views, shows how much the texture contrast does on its own. You do not need ornament when the masonry is this varied.

A Lantern Facing the Mountains

The full-height glass wall is the house's public face, and it changes character with the time of day. In daylight it reflects the sky and recedes. At dusk, lit from within, it becomes a lantern framed by the concrete pier on one side and the stone wall on the other. The planted terrace and the clay urn in front of it keep the composition rooted to the garden rather than floating above it.

The trade-off is real. A west or southwest glass wall in this part of Jalisco will take strong late sun, and we cannot verify what shading or glazing strategy is in play. Visually, though, the decision to put all the transparency in one volume is the right one. It makes the view an event instead of a constant, and it lets the solid walls do the work of privacy and thermal mass.

Arrival and Circulation

The entry is marked by a light glass canopy hung on steel rods, a gesture that borrows the transparency of the main volume without competing with it. Inside, a timber stair with lit risers climbs beside the stone wall, which continues from outside to in. That continuity is the most effective interior move in the house: the stone stops being a facade material and becomes part of the experience of moving vertically.

Upstairs, a hallway with a glass balustrade and copper pendants overlooks the double-height living space and a tall window toward the lawn. The balustrade keeps sightlines open across the void, so the upper floor stays connected to the main room below and to the garden beyond.

Living Inside the Double Height

The living room is where the glass volume pays off. Tall windows run along a grey tile floor, and the double height gives the furniture, a teal sofa and wooden dining chairs, room to breathe. Wine shelving built into the space hints at the program's priorities, and a glass-fronted cellar along a corridor confirms it, with oak cabinets and a granite counter under recessed lights.

The interiors are more conventional than the exterior, and that is worth saying. The finishes lean toward a polished residential vocabulary, and the cellar corridor feels closer to a showroom than to the raw masonry outside. The strongest interior moments are the ones where the outside materials come in, the stone by the stair and the concrete near the glass.

Plans and Drawings

The plans show a compact organization. The ground floor holds the kitchen, dining and living areas along with bedrooms and the stair, while the upper floor gathers three bedrooms around a central bathroom, with the stair on one side and the double-height void opening to the living room below. It is an efficient arrangement for 295 m², with the void doing most of the spatial work.

Cross section X-X' cuts through a central chimney flue, which suggests a hearth anchoring the living space, sensible in a highland town where evenings turn cool. Longitudinal section Y-Y' shows the two stacked floors and the straight stair against a sloping site, and the front elevation lays out the composition plainly: gridded glass, rubble stone, brick volume, each in its own band.

Why This Project Matters

Country-club subdivisions across Mexico tend to produce houses that either mimic a regional style or chase a generic glass-box modernism. Herradura House takes a third route: it uses local-feeling materials, stone and brick, without pastiche, and it reserves the glass for the one place where it earns its keep. That restraint is a useful model for mid-sized family homes on similar lots.

It is not a radical project, and its interiors are more comfortable than daring. But the exterior is a clear lesson in assigning each material a role and letting the joints show. For young architects working on residential commissions with modest budgets and big views, that clarity is more transferable than any signature form.

Herradura House by Zona Arquitectura Más Ingeniería (architect in charge: Jorge A. Barrientos Soto). Ciudad Guzmán, Zapotlán el Grande, Jalisco, Mexico. 295 m². Completed 2017. Photography by Carlos Baltazar.

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