After the Conquest in 1521, Spanish farmers also built haciendas in Oaxaca, but these were more modest than the ones in the north of Mexico or in Yucatán in the south. The farmers who chose to live pleasantly in this quiet isolated region were apparently less wealthy. Sometimes they intermingled with the local population by marrying Indian women.

Several haciendas in the Oaxaca Valley were situated close to the railway line built at the end of the nineteenth century. At the time there were no proper roads in mountainous Oaxaca, but the owners of the haciendas could make use of the train to transport their products to the markets in the cities. This brought them a period of relative prosperity, which because of the Revolution unfortunately did not last long. After 1910 Oaxaca was reduced to poverty and isolation once more.

Not much is left of these humble haciendas except in some cases the name. Guendulain, a hamlet just past El Tule (the famous huge old tree is there), is the place, where in the seventeenth century the hacienda of the same name used to be. Today there are only some ruined adobe walls to recall a more glorious past. Yet Guendulain employed more workers and the hacienda was older and of greater importance than the farm of the brothers Rojas de Cuautemoc not far from it, whereas now Rojas is a much bigger village. What is odd about Guendulain is that many of the inhabitants have the same surname. They are probably all descendants of one worker’s family that stayed behind after the Revolution.

Finding a piece of land for sale in one of the Indian villages close to Oaxaca should not be too difficult. With a bit of luck there might be an adobe house available with electricity and possibly a well, assets of great luxury in the valley. Outside the city there is opportunity to have a much bigger garden and enjoy the beautiful scenery. Sunrises and sunsets in the Oaxaca Valley are spectacular.

In the Sierra Madre mountain range in Oaxaca, two worlds of natural influence meet: that of the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The effect of this is that Oaxaca is a veritable birds’ paradise. A garden with plenty of trees and some fresh water will attract many species.

There is, however, a shortage of water in the Oaxaca Valley nowadays, due to the deforestation of the mountains caused by thousands of years of human activity. Water is pumped up from underground streams and wells are dug, which makes the groundwater drop to a very low level. It would be a good thing if the valley and the mountain slopes were reforested, so that rainwater would be retained.

In Guendulain T’s partner MRC bought her a piece of land, formerly the site of a brickworks, from señora Dominga, an old Indian woman who was going to move in with her son, and selling the site of her adobe house put her in a better financial position. A huge hole in the ground and the adobe kiln still give evidence of the brickyard that used to be there.

T designed a large square house for this site, measuring 15 by 15 meters with a patio of 7 by 7 meters in the centre. She situated the house at some distance from the big, dangerous hole. The rear of the house would be parallel and close to the fence marking off the land in the north, so that there would be plenty of open space on the other side in front of the house. MRC used the adobes of Dominga’s house to build a wall round the garden. The most logical place for the future garage seemed to be the narrowest part of the site in the west.

All the rooms of the square house were to face outwards; a corridor running round the patio would connect the rooms. The patio would be for light and ventilation rather than to be used as a living space: it was to be a ‘still centre.’ In their season the torrential rains are a great spectacle, and on clear moonlight nights the patio is an intimate vantage point to gaze at the stars from.

Her own quarters, her study, a large bathroom, the laundry room and the television room, were planned in the back part of the house. As most visitors came to see MRC, his study would be on the other side of the house, next to the front door. Opposite, to the left of the entrance, there would be an extra bathroom, the kitchen, the dining room and the living room. The bedroom was planned in between the two studies.

Now that the house had been completed, built exactly according to the design, it was amazing to see that the result satisfied every expectation. Its exceptional simplicity is pleasing to the visitor’s senses. T named the house ‘Casa Zapoteca’.

As it was increasingly difficult to find high quality wood for beams, and as the rooms of the house were actually too large for the use of beams, they were covered by vaulted ceilings of brick. T had used this vault effect before in the studio at Cocoyoc. It is originally an Arab building technique brought to Mexico by the Spaniards, who used it in building churches and chapels. There is no wood in the North African desert, so the Arabs invented the vault.

To build the vaults in Casa Zapoteca MRC and T had to send for ‘bovederos’ (vault builders) from Guadalajara, the only place in Mexico where bricklayers who learned this technique at an early age were still to be found.

The vaults lent quite an unusual character to the interior of the house. They created a feeling of enormous space, rather as if there were no ceilings at all. Roofing houses in this way is efficient in a dry climate. In Oaxaca, however, where it rains a lot in the months of July, August and sometimes September, the brick vaults have to be made watertight by covering them with a layer of cement. They also have to be checked regularly for cracks because of the frequent earthquakes in the area.

It is great to be woken up every morning at first light to watch an incredible sunrise from your bed. By the time the sun warms up, the birds wake up too. Twittering and chirping away they fly in to take their morning bath in the water circle round the rose garden. Enjoying all this while sipping your morning tea; could anyone think of a better start to the day?

A dowser was called in to help, who with his rod would be able to find the best spot in the garden to dig a well. A water tank supported by four strong, former telephone poles was installed on top of the well. A garden path that leads from the house to the garage was planted with jacarandas and palm trees on either side.

Around the large spruce in the centre of the garden a cobbled square was laid out and young pine trees from the nursery in El Punto were planted along its edges. All kinds of materials left over from the house were used to build an extra floor on to the garage to serve as a guesthouse.

The only thing left to be thought about now was the large deep hole on the site. In an English paper T read an article on a natural swimming bath. The water in this pond is kept clean by having all kinds of water plants on its edges. She thought this idea could also be applied to the hole in her garden. A German book describing the process in detail was to help her create the pond.

As a matter of fact the lakes around Amsterdam originated in a much similar way. Peat, needed for heating the houses of the city, was dug out in huge quantities, leaving large, very deep holes. Nowadays these pools with their great variety of water plants and waterfowl are considered to be part of the natural Dutch scenery. The Dutch people are only too happy to use the lakes for fishing, skating in winter and sailing in summer.

The lakes of the Netherlands have clayish subsoil, whereas the soil in the garden of Guendulain is porous, so that water easily oozes away. A concrete base was necessary to make the bottom watertight. In the future the pond in Guendulain will attract even more birds than there are now and the garden will be a real paradise for them.