Galeria de la SHCP in Mexico City
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by Cathi and Steven House

Travel has always been an integral part of our continuing education and personal growth. Since our first trip to Europe in 1975/76 where we spent a year abroad including five months living in an 800 year-old cave on the Greek Island of Santorini, we have made travel an important and regular part of our lives. Greek vernacular architecture introduced us to a different view of how architecture can mold culture and behavior in powerful ways. Who we have become as architects began during that first trip to the Mediterranean. Since then we have traveled the world through more than 65 countries continuing the studies that started there - which continue to guide our work and our lives every day.

Hotel Camino Real by architect Ricardo Legoretta
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Fountain at the Museum of Memory & Tolerance in Mexico City
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In 1988 an amazing series of events led us to San Miguel, a place that captured our hearts much as Santorini had years before. After several wonderful visits to Mexico, always including San Miguel, we bought a little ruin in the historic center and built a home to be a retreat, an escape from our normal lives to a place we love, where we are surrounded by our own art and books, where we can work on projects not distracted by the world normally embracing us. That initial project led to us designing more than forty homes in Mexico. It is a country we love and working here has added a new dimension we never imagined - to our work and to our lives.

Museum of Contemporary Art by architect Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon
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Courtyard of the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City
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About 15 years ago we looked at our lives and, filled with gratitude for how rich and full our lives are, we decided it was time to give back to our profession in some meaningful way. We made a decision when we started House + House in 1982 that our staff would always be selected from young people, recent graduates, talented and not yet ruined by another firm, and that we would always work toward mentoring them into holistic, soulful architects. The beauty of the relationships we have developed with Mexico and the joy we have had studying other cultures made us want to share our passion for travel with young designers, especially now, when the computer has threatened to take so much soul away from them. So we decided to create CASA - the Center for Architecture Sustainability + Art - as a study abroad program based in Mexico. Each summer we take a small group of architecture students to Mexico for an intensive immersion - both in the rich culture of that beautiful country, and with us, architects, not professors - for a program designed to change their lives, open their hearts and souls, help them see the possibilities. CASA is a link between the past and the future of architecture and a way of thinking about the world as a more soulful, thoughtful, joyful place for both designer and inhabitants.

Documenting the National Center for the Arts
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The Vasconcelos Library designed by Alberto Kalach
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Experiencing a holy ritual from an Indian healer in Mexico City
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Our CASA sessions always begins by exploring Mexico City - visiting the work of amazing architects - like Luis Barragan, Ricardo Legorreta, Enrique Norten and Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon - all woven together with wandering through ancient streets, churches, markets and plazas. We see paintings by Rivera, Kahlo, Siqueiros, Orozco, Botero, and Tamayo, and the beautiful spaces they inhabit. We visit Frida Kahlo's blue home, and Anahuacalli - the black stone pyramid gallery and studio of Diego Rivera - seeing in them Frida's and Diego's extensive collections of pre-Columbian art and paintings by them and their contemporaries. In the National Museum of Anthropology we travel through eons of Mexican history; in Gonzalez de Leon's Museum of Contemporary Art we see works by Mexico's aspiring young artists; at the National Center for the Arts they wander a campus filled with iconic structures; and in Luis Barragan's home and studio they feel the serenity of this master's private retreat. Our students experience the spiritual power of Barragan's extraordinary Chapel of the Capuchinas, the soaring church of San Josemaria Escriva, the stunning and heart wrenching Fenix Ave Fire Station and the fantastic Vasconcelos Library. They explore the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon at Teotihuacan and marvel at the magnificent Basilica displaying the miraculous Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint. We eat delicious meals whose recipes are descended from the Aztecs, shop for beautifully crafted folk-art from the artists creating it and awake each morning to the resonant sounds of church bells.

Sketching
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Frida Kahlo's Blue House
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The Fenix Ave Fire Station designed by architects BGP Arquitectura + AT103
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The Pyramids of the Sun & Moon at Teotihuacan
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Our time in San Miguel is equally full as our students explore and sketch, wander and photograph. We tailor unique assignments for each of them to test their skills, open their eyes and help them understand the possibilities. There are lively debates and intense critiques, lessons and thoughtful examinations, all designed to open their souls to new visions of what they can do as architects and as inhabitants of this world. They each work on one larger project through the various phases of development, interspersed with quick charrettes on smaller projects. The students visit numerous homes we have designed and have the opportunity to meet and talk with many of our clients. Their Spanish language skills and photography and sketching techniques improve greatly, as does their ability to communicate their ideas in poetic verbal and written expression. They have the opportunity to get their hands into clay in CASA's ceramics studio, learn to spin wool and see what they can make from beads and baubles, producing beautiful jewelry. Our students explore every corner of San Miguel, finding their own quiet spots and favorite restaurants. We also visit nearby towns and historic sites including Guanajuato, one of the most unique, extraordinarily beautiful cities in the world. The session concludes with a huge CASA Celebration Party where our many friends - artists, writers, sculptors and visionary individuals - challenge each of the students to deeply understand their journey.

The ancient Aztec ruins at Tula
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The Artisans Market in San Miguel
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Cathi explaining our design process to our CASA students
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Artist Kathleen Cammarata explaining her work
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For many, travel affords the opportunity to explore new cultures and the time to clear the mind and develop new visions. If one has the ability to record and to process this new information through writing or drawing or photography, then travel can also provide a unique knowledge base upon which to build new ideas. This process of education is common among artists and architects, professions where travel becomes the medium for gathering visual and experiential precedents for developing thoughts and ideas that can be later reinterpreted and crafted into their own creative works. Our goal is to open these young minds to see past the obvious, let go of preconceptions, find joy in the struggle to do more, think deeper, find new aspects of themselves. We help them overcome inner obstacles and learn to self-critique. And we make them into better architects, more aware, connected to their environment, better able to use their mind, heart and soul so that their projects are richer, more humane, more responsive to the world we live in and to its problems. We help them see the many ways they can affect families, communities and the future, by working from their hearts. This is a philosophy that has guided us on the extraordinary journey that has been our work and our lives, and we share it with them in the hope that they, too, will have rich lives and do soulful, meaningful work.

Learning to throw pots in casa's ceramics studio
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CASA architecture students discussing their work
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Richard & Anado's compound - "Casa de las Ranas"
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San Miguel's mural district with Colleen Sorenson
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Learning how to spin wool
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The San Miguel Mask Museum
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House + House's project "Casa Renacimiento"
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Jewelry making in CASA's jewelry studio
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Documenting the colorful streets in Guanajuato
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Overlooking the city of Guanajuato
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Sketching in Guanajuato
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Presenting a neighborhood hotel project during the CASA party
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Working on a final project
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CASA students finalizing their projects
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Preparing for the final CASA presentation
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Presenting a final design for a community chapel
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Lively CASA celebration gathering to meet our casa students
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Cathi and Steven House, the founders and principals of House + House Architects, have received over 50 design awards for their work in California, Mexico, Africa and the Caribbean, and have been featured in prestigious publications throughout the world including two monographs, House + House Architects: Choreographing Space and Houses in the Sun: light movement embrace. Their studies of vernacular architecture have been published in Mediterranean Villages: an architectural journey, and in Villages of West Africa: an intimate journey across time, which document the people, villages and unique architecture. Cathi and Steven lecture extensively and created CASA, The Center for Architecture, Sustainability + Art, a study abroad program based in Mexico.

House + House Architects' work reflects Cathi and Steven's passion for soulfully designed buildings intimately responsive to their site and to their inhabitants.

www.houseandhouse.com

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