Along Houston’s Buffalo Bayou, a low-slung 1930 Spanish Revival building was once home to an engraving factory. In 1985, it became the Stages Repertory Theatre. In 1992, it turned into the Children’s Museum of Houston. Today, it is the U.S. headquarters of the Mexican beverage company, Electrolit. To create a Texas home for the Guadalajara-based company, Electrolit assembled a fitting team: Schaum Architects, based in Houston; local architect Jesús Vassallo; and Luis Aldrete, an architect based in Guadalajara. The design effort locates warm Mexican design elements within a Texan context.
The design team completed a total gut renovation for the new headquarters, stripping the frame down to its original concrete bones and making repairs to the dilapidated building. “The challenge of this project was to make an architecture inside an existing architecture,” said Aldrete. “This was conceptually different from interior design or adaptive reuse, as the objective was not to alter the original architecture, or further its agenda, but to establish a new architecture inside of the old one, and then tune this situation to the point where a clear reciprocal relationship between both became evident.”
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