When you want to give yourself a makeover, you focus on the most outwardly-facing elements that can be easily changed: hair, face, nails, clothes, shoes. The same concept can be applied to buildings — especially when architects plan ahead for the possibility.

Imagine a structure that’s still got great bones but is looking a little dated or worse for wear. Developers often find it easier to just demolish the whole thing and start over again, but that process produces an outrageous amount of construction waste. Renovation is a far more sustainable approach, especially when the changes are minimal but high impact.
A new project called VITR from Archetonic offers one example of how this can be done. A pre-existing building in Mexico City showed lots of promise but needed some key modifications to be turned into a home and office space that felt integrated with its natural environment.
Walled gardens are common in this part of the city, and while they do offer privacy, they can also make houses feel closed off from the world outside. The architects say they wanted to “shatter the hegemony of the high walls behind which the neighboring houses hide in order to establish a dialogue that transcend[ed] the physical limitations of the project.”
To achieve that, they had to make sure every level of the house had opportunities to view and interact with nature. On the ground level, they created new access points to the yard and expanded views with large expanse...