The process before the style. This is not a slogan in MÉTODO — it is the operating principle that structures every project from the first site visit to the last construction supervision. In Mexico City, where the residential architecture market produces both excellent work and speculative developer product that looks similar from the outside, the difference between the two is the depth and rigor of the design process behind them.
A process-driven architecture begins with questions, not answers.
The Site as Design Generator
Every MÉTODO project begins with a site analysis that produces specific information: the solar path across the site, the prevailing wind direction, the topographic section, the regulatory envelope, the existing vegetation, and the urban relationships. This is the asoleamiento study — a document that maps the site's climate, not its aesthetics.
The analysis is not performed so the architect can then design whatever they intended to design regardless. It generates specific arguments: this orientation performs better than that one; this overhanging depth shades the glazing at peak hours; this courtyard location captures the prevailing breeze. The design form follows from these arguments.
In a city at 2,240 meters with seismic constraints, a 100-year rainy season, and an urban fabric that varies dramatically from delegación to delegación, the site analysis is the only reliable starting point. A design imported from another project — applied without site-specific analysis — will always leave performance on the table.
The Program as Spatial Argument
After the site, the program. In MÉTODO, the program document is not a room list with square meter targets. It is a description of how the clients live: when they cook, how they work from home, whether they entertain formally or casually, how their mornings and evenings organize spatially.
This description generates a spatial argument. If the client works from home and needs acoustic separation from family activity, the section must separate the work volume from the living volumes in three dimensions — floor level, ceiling height, or orientation — not just by a closed door. If the client entertains regularly, the transition from living to dining to kitchen must be a spatial sequence that accommodates both formal and casual simultaneously.
The room list comes after the spatial argument, not before it.
The Options Matrix: Structured Decision Making
La matriz de opciones — the options matrix — is the tool we use to structure the client's design decision at the beginning of the design development phase. After the site analysis and program, we produce two or three distinct design strategies, each responding to the same inputs but making different formal bets.
The matrix allows the client to make a genuine decision: not to approve a proposal whose alternatives were never visible, but to choose between approaches whose differences are explained clearly. The process before the style — the decision before the drawing.
This is one of the practices that most consistently reduces mid-project course corrections. When a client has genuinely chosen a design direction — understood its logic, compared it to its alternatives — they are far less likely to question it six months later when the design has developed in directions they did not anticipate.
The Section as the Design Test
In MÉTODO, the section drawing is the primary test of the design. Floor plans organize; sections reveal. The section shows whether the ceiling heights proposed will produce the spatial quality argued in the brief. It shows whether the stair is well-dimensioned or merely compliant. It shows whether the patio receives sun at the hours that matter for the climate strategy. It shows whether the building's section is a relato — a narrative of how the house will be experienced — or a stack of floor plates with no spatial argument between them.
We produce sections early and refine them through every design phase. The plan follows the section's logic; not the reverse.
Construction Documents as a Contract with Reality
The construction document phase is where the design argument is translated into instructions for building. This is where the philosophy either holds or fails. A process-driven design that produces vague or incomplete construction documents will be simplified and modified in the field — the contractor fills the gap, not the architect.
In MÉTODO, the construction documents are the site supervision by proxy. Every detail that matters for spatial or material quality is drawn — not assumed. The stone joint width is specified. The concrete formwork pattern is documented. The wood grain direction is indicated. When we arrive at the site for a supervision visit, we are verifying that the drawings were followed — not improvising decisions that should have been made in the design phase.
Próximos pasos
The process-driven approach takes more time at the front end — the site analysis, the program brief, the options matrix — and produces more reliable outcomes at the back end. Fewer change orders, more consistent construction quality, and a completed project that matches the design intent.
To see how we structure that process for a specific project, conoce el método de MÉTODO.