Casa Tepeji

A Brightening Makeover for a Mad Men Era Residence in Roma

The owner of this boxy, 1960s-era property in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood has transformed its once tightly organized stories into an airy, open residence. Shades of deep blue stucco will patina with time, and pops of vivid color enliven the once strict interiors and abundant balconies, in classic Mexican style.

The goal was to make this vintage home feel new and bright, but retain its classic, mid-century sensibilities. Located in the city’s legendary Roma neighborhood—only a few meters from the residence featured in Alfonso Cuaron’s award-winning film of the same name—the multistoried structure was designed to be tight, with designated spaces better suited to the more site-specific, serviced lifestyle of the 1960s than the expansive living that dominates today.

To spearhead the facelift, the home’s owner hit up French architect Ombeline de Laage, whose Mexico City home nearby showcases daring color in a vibrant tribute to its place in the lively city. Her focus was on brightening the home’s outdated spaces and breathing new life into the decor. De Laage began by opening up the structure—adding balconies, expanding the patio, and creating a double-height living room at the heart of the home. Local iron and wood workers were charged with creating new, clean-lined partitions and cabinetry, and the vintage shop finds were transformed into new furnishings and fixtures.

The biggest change for the overall feeling of this vacation home rental in Mexico City comes through its mesmerizing, muted blue palette that gives the space a subtle aquatic quality. In several rooms, the walls are textured in a matte stucco in varying shades of blues, from deep azure to soft tones of palest dove. The soothing stucco captures the reflective quality of the rooms’ natural light, softly illuminating the spaces. More vivid blues are also incorporated in the tiles that line the floor of the central patio and extend outward onto the home’s street-front façade. And adding to the home’s retro styling are new uses for the classic period colors of avocado green and goldenrod to give the kitchen and one of the baths a cool, neo-vintage look.

AROUND

This vacation home rental in Mexico City is located in Colonia Roma, one of its earliest upper-class suburbs, a neighborhood made more famous by the recent, award-wining film by Alfonso Cuaron. The area’s popularity faltered in the 1980s, post-earthquake, and its streets became a little downtrodden. But the neighborhood’s renaissance is well underway. Today, elegant residences hide behind gated facades in an extension of the Centro Historico, and the area’s wide boulevards are abuzz with hipster-run coffee shops and bars, street-front cafes and boutiques. 

Countless white table cloth and casual fine dining restaurants, plus a dedicated food hall filled with hip kiosks representing the city’s top restaurants and cafes, make the area a destination for food lovers, and parks and leafy, fountain-anchored squares make it an ideal place to explore on foot. Colorful street art melds with Art Deco mansions, huge trees and stately palms shade the sidewalks, and several museums and monuments are located in the area. Long a destination for fashion shoppers, there are multiple boutiques, bearing both big names and more local brands, located between Roma and the edgier Condesa neighborhood that borders it.

LOCATION

Mexico City/Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico. Nearest airport: Mexico City.

BEST TIME TO VISIT: Year round