Construction Diary: They Built Their Serene Mérida Home Without Felling a Single Tree

On a small former homestead in Dzityá, a municipality just outside Mérida, Mexico, architects Zaida Briceño and Orlando Franco built a home guided by one uncompromising rule: Not a single tree on the site could be felled. The resulting 1,075-square-foot residence is shaped by the existing vegetation, with two separate rectangular volumes connected by an outdoor path. Designed as both a family retreat and a statement on sustainable development, the project reflects the ethics of the couple’s firm, FMT Estudio, which they founded in 2015.

Finding the Right Land

Zaida: Before the pandemic, we were looking for available land in Mérida, but the lots there were either too narrow or noisy. The neighbors would have been right next to us, so we decided to look in Dzityá, a small town nearby. We found a section of an old solar Maya—a self-sustaining homestead—which is how people traditionally lived in these towns, growing fruits and raising animals. The lot was narrow and only a slice of what it once was, but it had more than 50 trees—and that was what mattered to us.

Orlando: We wanted to have a quieter life and to create a home with minimal intervention that was also comfortable to live in.