Arqhe Studio designs white marble mikveh for Mexico Metropolis’s Orthodox Jewish neighborhood

This bathhouse for conservative Jewish ladies in Mexico Metropolis encompasses a stark composition of grainy white marble by native structure agency Arqhe Studio.

Known as Mikveh Oh, the constructing is a non secular tub in Mexico Metropolis’s Bosques de las Lomas neighbourhood. It’s utilized by Orthodox Jews to wash themselves to acquire purity in accordance with their non secular beliefs.

Native agency Arqhe Studio created the mission with a stark design primarily based on a minimal rectangular quantity that conceals its very non-public happenings.

“Within the Jewish religion the mikveh is a purifying tub,” stated Aby and Ramón Helfon of Arqhe. “That is achieved via the immersion in ‘pure’ water, on this case, rainwater.”

The constructing’s inner tub is stuffed with rainwater, as widespread in mikvehs, which is collected on a concrete slab on its flat roof and saved in two cisterns. Nobody can contact the water earlier than it’s used, and it may well solely are available contact with sure supplies.

“The bathtub’s water is rainwater, which have to be collected naturally and might’t keep in touch with man or any materials that is not stone,” the studio stated.

The bathwater will not be filtered however chlorine tablets can be utilized. All of the pathways for the water are fabricated from concrete as nicely, in observance with its restrictions.

Mikve Rajel by Pascal Arquitectos

For the tub to fill, water fills one cistern that then goes to the bathtub utilizing a “speaking vessels system”. Municipal water intervenes and is mixed and purified with rainwater.

This water fills a pool within the inside of the constructing, which is clad completely in white marble with black grainy traces. The studio stated it selected the stone because it “displays the thought of cleanliness”.

Vibrant blue water from the tub is seen below a floating marble wall, which reveals ladies’s’ calves, ankles and toes.

“The girl should comply with the perimeter of this wall on the spiral path to the centre of the mission, the mikveh, which is lit with pure lighting from a translucid veil lined dome that makes the sunshine tender and diffuse,” the studio stated.

In accordance with the Torah, a mikveh is required for Jewish ladies after menstruation and childbirth, and earlier than they’re married.

As soon as bathed and dressed, the ladies go to an exit that bypasses a foyer and enters a personal courtyard.

“We determined to begin from a spiral idea in a approach that the distribution and form of the mission leads the person to the centre of the mission, in a ritual to realize religious cleanness and return to the purest state of man, and at last end on the core, the mikveh or tub,” the  studio stated.

Within the foyer are a white marble entrance desk, gray built-in sofas, chairs, wooden partitions and different furnishings. The realm is a ready room and the one public area inside.

A bronze lattice wall behind the couches is designed to assist “radiate heat gentle” contained in the cool, cavern-like setting, as white marble is featured elsewhere on the flooring and partitions.

A hall from right here accesses three ladies’s bogs, which act as preparation areas earlier than getting into the tub. Oak cladding is used for heat. Every has a door that results in the “moist hall”, or the mikveh, and a second door to accesses a “dry hall”, or hallway that guides the person alongside a steady gray terrazzo wall.

Outdoors, Mikveh Oh is clad in prefabricated concrete panels, sectioned with a sequence of slots to take care of the privateness of customers getting into and leaving.

“The tasks quantity is inflexible and sober, closed,” Arqhe Studio stated. “The inside turns into an area that hyperlinks ideas like heat and pureness.”

The amount spans 810 sq. metres, and surrounding the construction are plantings and a fence for privateness that encloses the brick courtyard.

Adjoining is a mission additionally designed by Arqhe Studio, with two residences. One is for rabbis who work at a temple close by, and one other is for the feminine rabbi that runs the mikveh.

Mikveh Oh is within the western a part of Mexico Metropolis, in a historic Jewish neighbourhood for the reason that mid-twentieth century. Town’s central, extra upscale neighbourhood Polanco can also be a Jewish neighbourhood and options many high-end retailers, condominiums and the famed Pujol restaurant.

Different mikvehs are Mikve Rajel by Pascal Arquitectos, additionally in Mexico Metropolis, whereas Kister Scheithauer Gross’ Ulm synagogue in Germany additionally options the non secular tub.

Pictures is by Yoshihiro Koitani

Venture credit:

Fundamental architects: Aby Helfon, Ramón Helfon
Group: José Cabrera