“I try to collaborate with nature to create vivacious designs,” says Marco Aldaco, the prominent Mexican architect whose buildings are celebrated for their soulfulness and sculptural drama.

“I work with the eternal materials—brick, cement, wood, stone, stucco, marble. I have not found any better materials—none more practical, none cheaper—than the traditional ones.”

Having designed residences in his native country everywhere from Quintana Roo to Acapulco (for Aristotle and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis), Aldaco is known for his technical mastery—of scale, color and materials—yet it’s something more intuitive that he thinks about most when he sits down at the drawing board: He wants all of his houses to have the effect on his clients of “satisfying and improving their spiritual perceptions.”

To do so, he is sensitive to the landscape, the villages and the history of the regions where he builds, incorporating primitive and indigenous elements.

Closely involved in each project, he maintains a small firm (there are just two other members) and takes on only two or three projects a year. “We’re the creators and directors of the projects, so we do few at the same time.” Although all of his houses are “totally contemporary,” Aldaco says, “they are not fashionable.” Humility, he explains, is an essential quality of each.

“I will never do absurd and very costly things for the principal end of impressing others.”

Marco Aldaco

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