House + House tour San Miguel homes
By Cathi and Steven House

Eleven members of the Oakland Museum’s Council on Architecture made a special trip to San Miguel de Allende, June 19–26, to tour nine homes designed by San Francisco and San Miguel architects Cathi and Steven House.

The Council on Architecture was founded in 1971 to support the Museum and to celebrate exceptional architecture. Its members are interested in promoting a greater understanding and appreciation of the built environment through architectural tours, exhibitions and lectures. In 2007, the Council also toured House + House’s San Francisco Bay Area homes and were intrigued to learn more about San Miguel and the work they have been doing here.

On Monday, June 22, Cathi and Steven House led the group on a personalized journey of the firm’s recent work. Starting in San Miguel’s historic center, they visited several surrounding colonias and finished in Atotonilco. Among the projects featured on the tour are a sculptural, flowing three-story home with a lap pool for clients from London in the Centro; a one-bedroom home over an art studio in Colonia Allende; and the playful rebirth of old factory buildings as a home and gallery in Atotonilco. The group stayed in two homes designed by the architects—Casa de las Estrellas, the Houses’ personal vacation rental house, and Casa Joya, designed for clients from New York. Both homes are located on Calzada de la Presa.

Most of the homes on the tour are featured in Cathi and Steven’s recent book, Houses in the Sun: light movement embrace, available at El Tecolote, Librería la Deriva and the Biblioteca’s La Tienda.

In an essay from Houses in the Sun, President of Cal Arts, San Miguel resident and most recent client of House + House, Steven Lavine comments, “In their humane and handcrafted modernism, with its deep sense of human comfort and pleasure, Cathi and Steven House carry forward the modernist questioning of the fundamental premises of architecture, by embracing sensuous enjoyment and human dignity, in the infinitude and wonder of shifting light and hand-wrought detail and in the clarity and interconnection of built forms.”

Over the past 15 years, House + House Architects have designed 17 homes in Mexico, beginning with their personal residence in San Miguel in 1994, and including two fully “green” sustainable homes on the Sea of Cortez. The News recently featured a comprehensive article on Cathi and Steven House’s residential projects in Mexico.