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The house

Cholula Condesa occupies a 1930s building at Calle Cholula 21, Colonia Hipódromo, with two curved bay windows on its façade. Francisco Pardo (architecture) and DÉCADA (interiors) turned it into 13 rooms on three floors around a light well.

The light well, crossed by steel bridges, seen from the second floor

The middle

A light well crossed by steel bridges.

The centre of the house is open from top to bottom. Steel bridges cross the light well between the rooms, and a white steel spiral stair climbs between the floors.

Light comes in from above and falls through all three floors.

A steel bridge crosses the light well between plants
The white steel stair climbing through the light well
A guest coming down the steel stair, in motion
The steel stair and a timber walkway beside a screen, in the light well

The details

Restored Tiffany lamps.

The house has restored Tiffany lamps, and the façade keeps its two curved 1930s bay windows.

The common room by one of the curved bay windows, with a paper lamp and a long bench
The common room: a wooden table, a paper lantern, a curved bench and the curved window
A built-in bench with striped cushions under the curved window

Manifesto

The city runs hot.Noise, traffic, mezcal, the three o’clock sun.We like it that way.

So we built a house to come down from it.Up top, heat and cold water.In between, thirteen rooms and a well of light.Downstairs, Calma.

Run a lap of the old racetrack.Climb. Sweat. Plunge. Come down.

Heat above. Calm below.

The name

A hand-made mountain on a racetrack.

Calle Cholula shares its name with Cholula, Puebla, whose great pyramid, Tlachihualtepetl, means “hand-made mountain”. It was built layer over layer for centuries, and a church was placed on its summit in 1594.

This house is a small version of the same idea: three floors, one on top of the other, with the heat at the top. Where Mexico City houses keep their water tanks, we put a sauna and a cold plunge.

The layers, top down

  1. 2025

    Francisco Pardo and DÉCADA rework it as 13 rooms. AD México features it on 20 September.

  2. 1930s

    The house at Calle Cholula 21 is built, with two curved bay windows.

  3. 1926

    José Luis Cuevas lays out Colonia Hipódromo over the track. The oval becomes Avenida Ámsterdam.

  4. 1910

    The Jockey Club opens its racetrack in La Condesa.

  5. 1594

    A church is built on its summit.

  6. c. 300 BCE

    Work begins on Tlachihualtepetl in Cholula, Puebla. It grows in stages into the largest pyramid by volume in the world.

In the press

AD México featured the house.

Architectural Digest México featured it on its Instagram account:

See the post on Instagram
The entrance at Calle Cholula 21, with the Cholula Condesa Hotel sign

See the rooms