Project Description

Casa Umbral is a residence designed for a young couple with no children, located on a 5 x 20-meter plot in the heart of Apizaco, Tlaxcala. Flanked by neighboring buildings and situated in an area with minimal urban lighting, the home responds to the clients’ desire for a private, flexible, and socially open space.

The program stems from clearly defined needs: a living room for watching TV, a kitchen with a bar, a primary bedroom, a secondary bedroom or studio — both with full bathrooms — and above all, a large central garden to host family gatherings.

Rather than pushing the program to the site’s ends, the project embraces a bold move: to empty the center. The garden becomes the core — a space that illuminates, ventilates, and connects — addressing both privacy and spatial quality, while reimagining how to inhabit a narrow lot in a mid-sized city.

Conceptual Framework – The Threshold as Architectural Idea

In Casa Umbral, the idea of the threshold is the project’s conceptual backbone — not just as a physical passage, but as a spatial and emotional condition shaping the experience of dwelling.

The home reflects on its urban context: a dense, central area with poor lighting and a desire for seclusion. In this scenario, the threshold is not a door or a wall — it is the interior garden. Measuring 3×5 meters, it visually connects the kitchen and living room while functioning as the breathing heart of the home, organizing movement, providing cross ventilation, natural light, and above all, a tranquil atmosphere.

Thresholds are also embedded in the movement through the house: from the entrance, where the garage and living room can merge via operable curtain walls, to the second floor, where a hallway becomes a bridge over the garden, generating a sequence of open collective space and introspective privacy.

On the upper floor, the master bedroom reinterprets the threshold as a visual limit: its internal balcony opens not to the street, but to an intimate zone, offering light and relaxation without sacrificing seclusion. The blank façade is not a denial of the outside world — it’s a conscious choice to turn inward. Here, architecture doesn’t close off out of fear — it opens inward with intention.

Spatial flexibility — crucial for the clients’ social lifestyle — also emerges from this conceptual foundation. The threshold is a possibility: the ground floor can open entirely from front to back, allowing for a unified social space during gatherings. This physical openness reflects a deeper intention: hospitality, connection, and belonging.

At its core, Casa Umbral is an architecture that protects without isolating, opens without exposing, and recognizes every transition — between light and shadow, public and private — as a design opportunity. The threshold does not divide — it orchestrates.