Cathi House talks with summer students at the new school and retreat center, which features a wall of indigenous volcanic stone.
On a 20-foot-by-220-foot lot, four CASA buildings are linked by gardens, courtyards, and fountains.
The CASA building, built with local materials and labor, supports a variety of uses.
Soaring expanses of glass tie rooms to the sun-filled terraces.
Light floods the 22-foot-high central studio with its glass-and-steel bridge.
The tall ceilings give the interior a sense of openness.
Made with local labor and materials, interiors feature travertine floors, a continuous red accent wall, steel railings, whitewashed surfaces, and an old stone wall.
A folded plate steel stair connects levels of the third CASA building.
CASA students are immersed in San Miguel’s cultural heritage, including 17th-century architecture and the Parroquia Cathedral on the town square.
Mexico City stops included the work of architects including Luis Barragan, Enrique Norten, and Theodore Gonzalez de Leon.
The Anahuacalli, Museum near Mexico City holds Diego Rivera’s studio and collection of pre-Columbian artifacts.
Students visited a museum housing Diego Rivera’s "Dream of a Sunday Afternoon" in Alameda Park, originally painted in the Hotel Prado in 1947.
San Miguel blacksmith Gustavo Cano demonstrates welding and cutting techniques for fabricating the student-designed steel light fixtures.
Analytical design exercises help students find their voice as designers.
Cathi House presides over a design crit session with students.
Cathi and Steven House pose with students on a field trip to the 1732 Hospice of the Holy Trinity, in Guanajuato.
