Old Bones New Spirit

BluPrint

March 2015

Distinctive louvers wrapped around the entire front facade and one corner of the Mahogany house. Slanted in 30- and 45-degree angles, the louvers give the illusion of motion to passersby. With its poured concrete second floor, walls almost a foot thick, and a foundation and structural members worthy of grand city buildings erected during the 60s and 70s.

The original intent was to tear it down was revised instead to renovate it into a contemporary home bearing no resemblance to its past existence, but without destroying its bones. Part of the house's facade is clad in rough, split-faced black adobe. The walls were stripped of their original brick cladding, leaving behind eight inches of solid concrete, which was re-clad in new cement and adobe.

Nazareno took its old but sturdy bones and breathed new life into them; in turn, the reborn structure has raised the true spirit of the place on which it stands. And that is perhaps the biggest accomplishment neither architect nor homeowner could have predicted.

• Layag, Sibyl. "Old Bones, New Spirit." BluPrint. March 2015. 01 February 2019.