The space a tree keeps
At Casa Sima, the trees claim their positions before the 150-square-metre house does. In the forest of Sierra de Tapalpa, in Mexico’s Jalisco state, Dosorozco chose to retain the existing trees. Creative director Guillermo R Orozco says that decision shaped the geometry, terraces and even the points where the building meets the ground. Reading the architecture from its blackened timber surface alone would miss the earlier choice. The first boundary of this plan is the space already occupied by living things outside it.[1]
An elongated plan follows the existing clearing, with two intersecting rectangular volumes. Living, dining and kitchen areas sit between two stone walls below; two bedrooms occupy the cubic volume above. That arrangement connects the intention to keep trees with the practical question of where rooms go. Affection for the forest is an incomplete explanation on its own. The slope and the shape of the available clearing could also have pressed the design towards this arrangement. Orozco places retained trees at the beginning of the process without requiring every aspect of the form to have a single cause.[1]
The entrance makes the user’s part in this decision more legible. A stepped walkway rises above the forest floor, linking the lower ground to the house volumes higher up. A steel frame supports a timber wall at the entrance. Orozco calls this threshold an elevated courtyard: it frames the surroundings without becoming an enclosed room. The ground continues beneath the route, and arrival takes the form of a sequence of steps. The plan’s negotiation with the site becomes an ordinary act of approaching the house.[1]
Two different grounds for the terraces
The south terrace meets the ground; the north terrace is raised. Both upper bedrooms also open onto roof terraces. The house therefore offers several relationships with the exterior: stepping onto the ground in one place and looking over it in another. Orozco’s emphasis on rotation between floors and diagonal views makes sense in that arrangement. For a compact dwelling, asking which outside space a room reaches is more revealing than treating the amount of glazing as the whole explanation of openness.[1]
The materials are best read after that arrangement. Stone walls remain visible inside, with dark timber ceilings beside broad glazing. The entrance timber is treated with oil and heat using the local weatherproofing method Orozco describes. These choices establish a relationship of colour and texture with the forest. A dark surface, however, cannot substitute for the planning decision to keep a tree in place. The persuasive connection here is that appearance and layout address the site through different means: the material echoes the tree while the volume leaves its position available.[1]
That suggests a useful question to take to another house: which room, approach route or terrace level actually changed because of the intention to fit a forest? At Casa Sima, the elongated plan within the clearing and the differently placed terraces provide concrete places to look. Asking the same question of another design does not require repeating blackened timber. It requires the thing being retained to occupy real space in the drawing. That is the measure through which this house’s relationship with its forest becomes tangible.[1]