Loft Cubo

Loft Cubo is a compact weekend retreat built in 2018 by architect H. Omar inside the Club de Golf Estado de Mexico, conceived when a family needed to expand their existing weekend house to accommodate occasional visitors. The answer is a sober two-level cube with large windows facing east and south, built entirely from concrete blocks and finished with a lime mixture flavored with nopal and colored by natural pigments extracted from the earth.

The plan reads clearly across its two levels. The ground floor connects directly to the pool and the garden, with a marble floor carrying a bathroom that holds a toilet and shower, followed by a TV room and a dining room proposed in double height. That vertical opening is deliberate: it filters natural light into the heart of the plan and lets the house run on the least possible electricity during daytime hours. On the upper floor a bedroom sits on a mezzanine framed by beams and cumaru wood, lending warmth to the space and merging with the staircase in both material and function.

Small footprint, careful planning

That staircase does more than connect the two levels. It also conceals a minibar, kitchenware and a wine cellar, an approach that optimizes space and keeps movement through the home fluid. This kind of multi-use joinery is a common strategy in small house design, where every element is asked to perform more than one task and where storage is folded into circulation rather than added as a separate room.

Weekend and second homes carry their own design logic. They are used intermittently, so they reward durable, low-maintenance materials and passive comfort over complex mechanical systems. The choice of concrete block and earth-based lime finishes here speaks to that thinking, as does the reliance on daylighting through the double-height dining room. Orienting the main glazing to the east and south is a familiar move for capturing morning sun and steady light through the day, a quiet form of passive solar design.

The result is a small building that takes its limits seriously, turning a modest cube near the golf club into a flexible, light-filled space that works hard for the family who use it.