Casa Oruç: A Dramatic Descent From Pines to a Floating Forest Home
Casa Oruç sits in Mineral del Monte, Mexico, where mist, pines, and a severe grade shape daily rhythms. Saavedra Arquitectos steers a house through this wooded slope with an approach that starts high and threads down to living. It’s a house, yes, but also a route through trees and rock, built for hosts who love company and quiet in equal measure.
Mist lifts from the pines as the day brightens. From the highest edge of the lot, a path slips into the trees and sets a measured descent toward home.
This is a house in Mineral del Monte, Mexico, designed by Saavedra Arquitectos for generous hosts on a sharply sloped, wooded site. The throughline is movement: enter from above, cross a bridge, circle a tower, and land in rooms that gather people while staying tuned to light, rain, and the forest.
Enter From Above
Arrival begins at the east, where the land is highest and the house stays hidden among trunks and mist. A bridge carries visitors off grade toward a compact tower, using the gap to signal a shift from hillside to architecture and to clear the tangle of roots and rocks below without heavy touch.
Bridge And Tower
Inside the tower, stairs wrap a living room, turning a vertical move into a social one with glimpses across levels. Materials register each step—exposed black concrete at turns, ribbed cement block along runs—so feet and hands read the route as texture and temperature change with shade and sun.
Procession To Living
After the first flight, an exterior frame catches sky and reminds visitors they’re already within the house while still outdoors. The next hall aligns with an inverted gabled concrete slab that seems to float among branches, and a well-placed window previews a slice of the living room before the final turn lands at the door.
Rooms That Gather
A broad, open area greets guests. Dining sits to one side, the kitchen to the other, and the zone between acts as a living room—one room, many conversations. A south-facing terrace extends the social field toward warmth and views, letting groups spread out while staying within earshot and sightlines.
Roof, Water, Light
The inverted gable continues over the bedrooms, its dark concrete defining a clear spine for circulation and drainage. One wing yields to a tree that pierces the roof, a quiet truce that keeps canopy and room in dialogue. To the north, a glazed hall looks toward a lighter patch of ground carved by runoff, a place held for planting. From a side door, the house leaps 7.5 meters between trunks—up where the light gathers—and bedrooms catch sun that never reaches the forest floor. In rain, the roof valleys collect and send water to a cistern, closing the loop with the weather.
Pines frame the exit as they framed arrival. Light thins, air cools, and the route back up rewinds the story at a slower pace, leaving footsteps, concrete, and leaves in calm alignment.
Photography by Onnis Luque
Visit Saavedra Arquitectos
