A house once occupied by Mexican communist party founder M. N. Roy has been converted into a nightclub by French architects Emmanuel Picault and Ludwig Godefroy.

The private club, located in a run-down terrace in the Roma district of Mexico City, is named M.N.ROY in honour of its famous former resident.

The outside of the house is left completely unaltered, concealing the nightclub where a textured timber pyramid envelops a double-height dance floor and DJ booth.

Rough timber blocks and glistening copper tiles cover the walls of other rooms, which are filled with wooden and leather furniture.

Corridor walls are clad with black basalt tiles that are dramatically lit from below to accentuate patterns carved into their surfaces.

Behind the pyramid, black walls gradually step inwards to surround a dimly lit bar.

Clubbers overlook the dance floor from a glass-fronted mezzanine.

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Photography is by Ramiro Chaves.

Here are some more details from Godefroy:

M.N.ROY club in Mexico City

Chic By Accident from the Franco Mexican architect Emmanuel Picault together with the French architect Ludwig Godefroy just completed a private club in Mexico City, called M.N.ROY.

What s M.N.ROY ?

M.N.ROY is a project made as an open question, the one has for goal not to answer obviously what's actually the M.N.ROY.

In this way, the place can be perceived as an anti-project of what could be the commission of a private club in Mexico City, an more precisely in its Roma neighborhood.

In fact Roma has been very important in the definition of the architectural identity of this space, located in a very dueling neighborhood, and responding on one hand to its past, the one of the high mexican bourgeoisie of Porfirio Diaz (Mexican dictator 1876 – 1911) time which abandoned the neighborhood after the 1985 earthquake; and the today's reality of a trendy urban area that Roma became.

The club is the expression a high singular personality settling in the strong left over of its past time.

According to this, where normally the renovation of the facade appears to be the starting point, the opposite was done: letting the facade untouched to increase the rupture between the original meaning of the house and the redefinition of it.

We kept the house as a testimony of what it was, the house where Manabendra Nath Roy founded the first clandestine Mexican communist party.

By not touching the facade we made paradoxically appealing the building from outside, stimulating the curiosity of the people passing by and seeing a large queue trying to enter an almost ruin house.

Once inside, we made another step in a schizophrenic architectural way, introducing a new language, deeply belonging to the mexican culture, and nevertheless completely stranger to the Porfirio Diaz architecture time.

We used a pre-hispanic language reminiscence inside, in a participative way and not contemplative as could be a nostalgic neo pre-hispanic vision of it, introducing new materials (copper, leather, wood, volcanic stone), geometries (puuc art, maya arch, pyramids), and everything, down impressive generous volumes.

M.N.ROY is the impossible mix of cultures, volumes, architectural styles, making possible an improbable modern space of melting pot.

Architects: Emmanuel Picault / Ludwig Godefroy

Creative team: Rodrigo Madrazo / Marco Margain / Claudio Margain / Rodrigo Diaz Frances / Paolo Montiel / Leon Larregui / Emmanuel Picault / Ludwig Godefroy

Industrial design: Laila salomon / Emmanuel Picault / Ludwig Godefroy

Administration: Roberto Ayala

Construction: Aaron Yepez / Jose Luis Madrigal / Carlos Tapia / Base por altura / Alonzo Mungia / Carlos Cortes / Jose Luis Iturbe / Rigoberto Martinez