Em-Estudio turns a Mexico City basement into a book-lined bar

Mexico City studio Em-Estudio has lined a basement bar with floor-to-ceiling walls of books, modelling Libreria Valladolid on the vintage bookstores of the capital's Roma neighbourhood.

The bar sits below an early 20th-century house in the historic colonia. According to the studio, the design was intended to evoke the experience of exploring old bookshops.

"It captures the thrill felt when entering these places, searching for a unique story that has patiently waited among thousands of books on all topics and from many eras," Em-Estudio said.

How does the sequence unfold?

Visitors enter from the street through an unassuming door. The entry vestibule holds shelves packed with old volumes, with more stacks running along a wooden staircase that descends to another threshold.

Small lamps are squeezed between the spines and set on top of the stacks, producing a moody glow that sets up the bar beyond. Em-Estudio described the staging deliberately: "The old bookstore is encountered upon entering, as you descend the stairs, and it remains behind as you cross the first threshold, where the books transform into the skin that embraces the rooms."

What does the basement look like?

Inside, dark herringbone flooring (a zigzag parquet pattern) and burgundy-drenched surfaces continue the bookshop atmosphere. The larger walls are lined entirely with shelves of books stacked spine inwards, so the warm beige of the pages faces the room instead of the covers.

Cove lighting illuminates the books, creating a dramatic contrast with the otherwise shadowy bar. Banquettes below come with circular marble tables for drinks.

"The pages of thousands of books resting on bookshelves that reach the ceiling shed their literal meaning, becoming a tapestry in shades of white that only time can give, bathed in a gradient of warm light," the studio said.

The DJ booth, the bar and the bathrooms are picked out in gold leaf and brass to draw the eye.

Is there a hidden room?

There is. A further lounge space is disguised by another bookshelf, decorated with cans and objects that the studio says "evoke a grocery-store bar".

This room swaps burgundy for green — applied in gloss across the ceiling and repeated in a long marble table running through the centre. Dark wood Van Beuren chairs with yellow upholstery line each side, parallel to more uplit walls of books. A mirror covering the back wall visually doubles the space, extending the table and the shelves into the reflection.

Who is behind it?

Em-Estudio was co-founded by architect Ivan Esqueda and interior designer Gala Sánchez-Renero, a husband and wife who also run individual practices. Their previous collaborations include a holiday home on a steep hillside in Oaxaca, Mexico, built from coloured concrete chosen to blend into the rocky mountainside.

Project credits list architecture and interior design by Taller Ivan Esqueda and Gala Sánchez-Renero Estudio; the design team of Berenice Galindo, Sergio Peláez and Fabián Cedillo; construction and installations by Miguel Ángel Márquez; and carpentry by Leonardo Cabrera. Photography is by Rene Villaseñor.

Libreria Valladolid joins a growing run of Mexico City hospitality interiors that treat literature and shopping rituals as design material — evidence that the city's basement scene now reads as literally as it drinks.