Everything inside Downtown—a buzzing hotel, hostel, restaurant, and retail complex in the center of Mexico City —has a story. The mescals you sip on the mezzanine come from small producers, their biographies explained by a bartender presiding over rows of minimalist glass bottles. Around the corner, a boutique sells modern dresses made with traditional weaving techniques by artisans who share 50 percent of the shop's profits. The building itself, constructed during the late 17th century, was once home to the Countess of Miravalle, for whom the city's Condesa neighborhood is named. An imposing manse with heavy masonry walls, it was used as a hotel in the 19th century and returned to a private residence in the early 20th. Most recently, it served as a jewelry market, with its walls plastered over and a courtyard converted into a garage.
For the building's latest chapter, a young local firm, CheremSerrano, has renovated it into a platform for all things cool in Mexico City, a self-conscious embodiment of the capital's reputation for food, art, design, and culture. “It was important to create a scene,” says principal Abraham Cherem, who has slowly begun renaming his firm Cherem Arquitectos following the tragic murder of cofounder Javier Serrano at age 29 just a few months before the project opened. The scene they set has a cosmopolitan affect and a fetish for authenticity discernible in its bohemian mix of architectural elements. The designers preserved remnants from each era of the 38,000-square-foot, four-level building's history, peeling back finishes, salvaging materials, and making careful alterations to the landmarked structure. “We wanted to make it particular,” says Cherem, “to be contemporary but with a Mexican flavor in the materials.”
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