Luna de Queso’s New Location

Love architecture? So do we! So when one of our favorite restaurants, Luna de Queso decided to build, we watched carefully. We thought some may be interested in learning more.

Architects: m arquitecturA
Area: 347 m²
Year: 2020

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Text description provided by the architects. The program is located on a 660 m2 lot, facing northeast with a 22 m wide front and a 30 m depth, next to what will be the Autograph by Mariott Hotel on the street Calle Josefina Orozco in the city of San Miguel de Allende. All the way form the access it transmits the desired comfort of the user with a side parking lot in front of the building. Entering the enclosure you are greeted by the textures of the project, leaving behind a brutalist facade with a modest access. On the right side is the store of 105 m2 under the textures of a reticulated slab of reusable coffers, leaving gaps and supporting the exposed lighting illuminating the shelves as well as the cheese sale area.

Further, a niche frames the cheese maturation cellar. If you want to continue to the café or ascend to the office you can follow this corridor. In case you didn’t enter through the shop you can continue the exterior route leading to the entrance and continuing the corridor to your table and seating area. The interesting exterior route is a slat partition walker cut into squares equivalent to half of the standard size (14×14). At the bottom on your left-hand side, while continuing advancing, you see a sloping wooden roof, reticulated by the edges, supported by wooden pillars and compacted tepetate panels giving clarity to the exterior area. Some diners move around admiring this beauty and enjoying the garden under a leafy tree. 75m2 of the café is covered by a sloping roof, containing tables and the customer service area, in addition, a small loft room and the bathroom are located under the stairwell, this block is lined with a sealed “carbon black” sheet giving an elegant touch to the slightly industrial context softened by its delicacy. A great detail is the continuity of the seam of the cut that is appreciated as a singular piece of art.

One of the fundamental parts of the project is the kitchen with 57 m2 on the ground floor and 44 m2 on the upper floor, this volumetry faces the firm tepetate facade that we see to the southwest of the lot and that can be appreciated in the background. The upstairs office repeats the details of the hollowed slab, it has a panoramic view towards the double height of the café, leaving the support of the wooden structure ceiling visible. When turning the view upwards it is possible to see the separation of these two volumes. The intention was to use common materials on an artistic level, for example, two types of concrete lattices were manufactured on site, one on a large scale evoking the latticework of small terracotta lattices and other elongated ones taken from the old neighborhood skyline of the city.