Roger Bores, founder of HW Studio in Mexico, was founded to create a space that promotes peace, based on artistic principles and Eastern (Buddhist) philosophy and Western concepts. They understood architecture as the act of setting limits in space that achieve a beauty of austere elegance. The founder was invited by Yinjispace to open an online open class at 11.00 am on January 22, 2022, and the Spanish architect Paloma served as the translator throughout the process!

With the theme of "The Hill in Front of the Canyon", Roger Bores explained the cultural background, design process and three basic elements of the project. The work was inspired by the meditation of vipassana, the process of exploring the interior. He understands this project as "a sheet," a vivid sheet with continuity, when the sheet is lifted, a space is naturally created, and in the process, trying to cross the most modern elements to the ancient civilization , respect the original ecology of the building.

Yinji: May I ask the source of inspiration for the "eyes" of the building shell? How to structure the story of this project?
Roger: I think it's a common phenomenon with all the kids in the world, when we're scared, we hide under the blankets on the bed, we surreptitiously watch. At least in us in Mexico and maybe in some western countries, if you hear a horror story at night and you can't sleep, you cover yourself with a sheet, your face is exposed to peek, full of curiosity, to look outside Is there a ghost.

Yinji: How do you balance the naturalness and practicality of the building, and how do you deal with indoor moisture resistance?
Roger: I don't know if it's a common phenomenon in the world, or I'm guessing, we don't want to avoid humidity, our idea is that the interior of this piece is marked by the presence of nature, and we certainly try to protect things like wood Sensitive material, but if in the corners of the vault it starts to darken from moisture, which is part of the ageing of the building itself, and we didn't want to avoid it.

Yinji: When the main functions of the building are gathered in the low-lying part of the plot, and the water will also collect in the low-lying place, will this cause trouble to the use of the building, and how would you solve it?
Roger: Now there are some technical means to solve the problem, like the drain pipe, the drain pipe goes into a collection system, we call it a biomanager, which organically breaks down the entire drainage system through waste, because we don't want sewers mouth. I don't know how the word is said in Spanish, this thing is little metal caps that we put where there is water so that the water can run off, I don't know what they're called in Spanish, but the whole drainage system, if you look here, It's been raining a lot this day, the passage between these things, we have perforated boards underneath so that all the water goes away and doesn't build up here, we had to fix that without using sewer openings.

Yinji: What do you think is the hardest part of this project?
Roger: We wanted to make it look like a temple from the start, and if you look at the window that illuminates our bathroom, we made a very small cutout that even gave the feeling that no window existed, which can be seen here Come on.

I think the most complicated thing is to build this concrete vault because building systems-wise it supports all of our weight on it, it's a mesh roof with some beams and polystyrene in it. So we are faced with a difficult situation.

How to hide the beams and polystyrene from being seen and make it look like a complete work, a complete stone that we can dig on to generate space. So I think that's the most complicated thing to do is to get all the material so far and the other thing I want to point out is that the shape of this arc helps a lot, it keeps the water in simple gravity Under the action, it slides down from both sides, and it is also a very ideal shape that can carry a huge weight, that is, the relationship between architecture and nature. we had to ask an expert tree engineer to tell us what type of roots these trees have.

Yinji: What special designs did you use to solve the conflict between the design of the building foundation and the growth of tree roots?
Roger: The trees are Mexican pines with the roots pointing down. The house it didn't touch any roots except the tree that was struck by lightning so we had to cut off a lateral root. Engineers told us this could be done because its vital root system was downward.

Yinji: What are some of the design techniques you often use or the way of thinking when designing?
Roger: This is a very difficult question. But I can sum it up in 3 areas, the first thing we did was listen, listen to him very well, try to understand him as a person, not as a client and what the story behind the person was, we tried to Learn more and turn customers into our friends. This then the second part is to do the same thing with the territory, whether it's in the middle of the city or in the middle of the forest, like in this case, because the territory doesn't speak to you as clearly as the client. So you have to listen carefully to the whispers everywhere.

The third part is ourselves. To know ourselves very well, and to get into our inner self, this is where the meditation method we use comes in handy, which is what we have referred to as "contemplation". in which we try to find the emptiness within usWe try not to think about architecture in the first phase, we just listen, to collect, we hear ourselves, we hear the place, we hear the voice of the client, they are dishes that have to be slow cooked, we try to think in addition to Everything else about the building itself, then the building will come naturally.

Yinji: Do you have any research on Chinese culture? The logo of your firm looks very similar to the cultural symbols of Chinese Taoism, and some angles of the building are very similar to the eastern bridge form. Is there some shallow connection between them?
Roger: There are some superficial connections between some shapes of the building and the oriental bridge form. Our logo is an h and a w and is also our company name. h is silent in spanish, that is to say, it stands for silence, the presence of silence is very important to us, and w comes from the Japanese concept wabisabi (wabi-sabi), which stands for imperfection Beauty exists, so these 2 concepts come together.

Did I answer that question about bridges in one go too? I learned about Taoism from reading Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. You know more about it than I do. It is a very interesting Chinese philosophical thought. I feel that I personally have a deep connection with Eastern philosophy because I have been exposed to Taekwondo since I was a child. I am a black belt in Taekwondo.

Today I remember one of the first books I read was a book with Korean calligraphy, so the logo resonated a lot with me when we were working with graphic designers. I don't know if it has something to do with my past or if the Easterners have a deep connection to it too, I see a kind of silence in it. This does not exist in the Western world, and the works that emerge from the building process seem to be more Chinese, Japanese or Korean than Mexican.