Casa de Barro by Goma Architects nestles into the rolling hills of Amealco, a vaulted brick retreat at Rancho El Ameyal.
Set within Rancho El Ameyal, an ecological retreat in central Mexico, Casa de Barro approaches its setting with quiet deference. The ranch itself is defined by its shifting landscape—oak groves, wildflower fields, a lake that swells with the season. Rather than compete with this drama, Goma chose to place their structure into the hillside, half-hidden, its vault rising from the ground like an uncovered fragment.
From above, the only clues are a pair of slender chimney forms, registering the building’s presence without disturbing the terrain. Inside, the space reveals itself as a singular brick volume, curved in a long barrel vault that opens in two directions: to a shaded courtyard on one side and to a framed view of forest on the other. The experience is less about enclosure than about attunement—how light falls, how the air shifts, how soil meets sky.
Brick was the sole material, chosen as much for its local availability as for its capacity to belong. The red-fired clay, familiar in the region, carries warmth in both color and touch, grounding the architecture in rural modesty while creating a sense of permanence. Light, entering through skylike cuts in the vault, registers the passage of the day in subtle, lantern-like shifts across the surface.
Casa de Barro joins a constellation of structures at El Ameyal—a tent, a caravan, an adobe villa—each with its own way of framing the land. But here, the act of retreat becomes elemental: a descent into the earth, a room shaped by brick and light, a reminder that architecture at its most thoughtful is less an addition to the landscape than an extension of it.
