Casa Sima, a blackened-timber forest house in Sierra de Tapalpa, Mexico

Casa Sima began with a rule: not a single tree on its sloping forest site in Sierra de Tapalpa, Jalisco, would come down. Dosorozco's creative director Guillermo R Orozco says the place "already had its own order", and that one decision shaped nearly everything else, from the house's long plan to where it meets the ground. Rather than dig in, the studio lined up its blocky volumes with the edges of an existing clearing.

You arrive by a stepped walkway lifted above the forest floor, climbing to what Orozco thinks of as a raised courtyard: a timber wall on a steel frame, suspended over the path. The wood is finished with a local oil-and-heat technique that leaves it rough and blackened, so it reads almost like the trunks around it. Orozco describes it as a vestibule that never becomes a room.

Inside the 150-square-metre house, a ground-floor living, dining and kitchen space sits between two exposed stone walls under dark timber ceilings, with glazing opening to terraces north and south. A study and bathroom share that floor; upstairs, two timber-and-plaster bedrooms lead onto roof terraces.

It's a private home, so there's nothing to visit, but a thoughtful read for anyone interested in building lightly in the woods.

Our summary of a story from Dezeen, published 21 October 2026. Read the original

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