In Mexico they have invented the widening-floors

Finally a house that begins to be built from the roof.

Finally the fantasy of being able to expand a floor to locate a study, another bedroom, a warehouse or an attic in which to store what we will no longer use.

However, it is not fantasy.

It's reality.

This project is, more than a place for junk, a space to access a better life.

The architects Rozana Montiel and Alin V. Wallach are the authors of an idea as simple as it is transformative.

One more room is a recycled bamboo and aluminum structure that takes very little time to build / assemble - less than two weeks - and has a very low production cost.

Rather than being raised on a plot, at ground level, this lightweight structure allows the houses to be extended by the roof when it sits on the rooftops, as long as they are flat.

enlarge photo View of the bamboo and aluminum module.

Photography: Jaime Navarro Jaime Navarro

It is about using a home as a foundation, placing a roof-shaped structure over an existing house and gaining with this gesture a lot of interior space -bedrooms or study area- and, at the same time, open space: a new terrace surrounding that room on the old roof.

Recycling the house as a platform and using the ground clearance as protection, the architects achieved the design of an almost prefabricated kit for very fast assembly that allows the houses to grow with little effort, very little work and avoiding a large financial outlay.

The Mexican body dedicated to public housing (Infonavit) is behind this ingenious and yet viable and realistic project that starts from a typical house of 36 square meters and increases its living space by another 25 meters.

Montiel explains that bamboo is a fast-growing, flexible and sustainable material and that the external recycled aluminum coating acts here as an insulating element that facilitates maintenance and reinforces the safety of the structure.

enlarge photo View of the interior of the bamboo and aluminum module.

Jaime Navarro

The Mexican architect says that the housing model on which her project lands is part of the basic catalog of the Infonavit company.

That was the key to designing not a utopia, but a useful element capable of solving, right away, common problems.

Its prototype was located in a house in Temixco, near Cuernavaca, in the state of Morelos.

The will is to expand the houses to try to combat overcrowding.

Montiel associates with this gesture the will to reduce domestic violence by adding a bedroom to a home that only has one.

As in the Victorian novels, your room could be on the roof.

In the harsh reality, having two bedrooms instead of one means intimacy, privacy and security unthinkable for many families.