Mexico City house becomes temporary brick altar for religious relic

Local studios T-Unoauno and Taller Popular de Diseño adapted a small home in Xochimilco, Mexico to be a community altar wrapped in red bricks.

In the historic Mexico City borough, a religious image known as NiñoPa — or "child father" or "son of God" — has been revered and honoured by the community for over 400 years.

Each year, a local family is selected to transform their home into an altar for NiñoPa – referred to as mayordomía – and host religious ceremonies, parties and banquets for the year-long festival.

The Trigueros Olivares family applied to host the NiñoPa in 1984, waiting 40 years for their home to be selected as the 2024-2025 mayordomía.

Once assigned, the family tasked T-Unoauno, Taller Popular de Diseño and Manuel Alejandro Aleman with transforming a 77-square metre (828-square foot) lot in one of the oldest neighborhoods near the Xochimilco historic center into a temporary temple for the God child.

The design team considered how they could transform a dwelling into an altar and for an altar to remain a dwelling. They considered how the proposed intervention could be incorporated into and improve the residence after the mayordomía period concluded.

The resulting 90-square metre (970-square foot) space contains an enclosed courtyard for gathering, sheltered altar and a private upper residence for the family.

To accommodate not just the relic, but also the pilgrims who come to see it, the team separated the public space into three zones. The street approaching the house is closed for certain periods each day to accommodate the masses, extending the limits of the building into the public way.

The team transformed the garage into a large open-air patio space, open daily to the public.

Red ceramic brick walls stair-step around the perimeter and contain small niches to be the receptacle of the prayers of the believers, the team told Dezeen.

The top of the single-storey wall forms a datum line around the trapezoidal patio, opening views to the brick and stucco of the surrounding buildings.

Visitors pass through a solid wood door to the main altar space where the NiñoPa rests on a stacked brick pedestal, winged by angled brick walls. A deep window brings light from the patio into the altar space.

Upon leaving the altar, visitors light candles and place them on the ledges wrapping the patio.

An exterior corridor runs along the side of the property, providing the host family access to their residence.

"Xochimilco, due to its pre-Hispanic origin, still preserves self-construction procedures close to the use of local materials such as stone, wood, and lime," the team said.

"Thus, we decided to use wood from abandoned trajineras as part of the furniture for benches, doors, and shutters, lime as the interior coating of the altar, and brick as the coating and floor of the atrium."

The family carried out most of the labor for the project themselves, bringing in neighbours and local construction masters to volunteer their time to complete the altar.

Other public spaces that employed intricate brickwork include a cinema with curving interior protrusions in Haikou, China by One Plus Partnership and a cultural centre with a cluster of brick volumes that mimic the historic grain of Hertford, England by Bennetts Associates and Citizens Design Bureau.

The photography is by Andrés Zedillo (Espacios) unless stated otherwise.

Project credits:

Design team: T-Unoauno, Taller Popular de Diseño
Architects in charge: Carlos Espinosa, Jonatan Blancas, Ana Gabriela Trigueros, Manuel Alejandro Aleman, Emilio Zuñiga

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