From the street, M.N. Roy, a recently completed 2,100-square-foot club in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood, looks like a crumbling, ramshackle house. A fitting tribute, perhaps, to its namesake, Manabendra Nath Roy, who as a left-wing Indian revolutionary founded the Mexican Communist Party within the building’s walls 100 years ago. Enter the space these days, and the design is quite a surprise—what one of its architects, the France-born, Mexico-based Ludwig Godefroy, describes as “transgressive.” Says Godefroy: “When you’re right in front of the house, you’re like, ‘Am I sure this is where I was invited?’ But then you go inside and you understand.”

Designed by Godefroy and fellow expat (and now Mexican citizen) Emmanuel Picault, the club, which inhabits a rustic, stripped-down, Mexican-vernacular aesthetic, is meant to be a spirited ode to the country the two architects call home. Made from simple, locally sourced materials—pine (as seen above), black-pigmented concrete, volcanic stone, copper sheets—the space is “like a Mayan or Aztec temple,” says Picault, who in 2007 designed Reves, a bar in the nearby Polanco neighborhood. “We’re two French guys working in Mexico, so you might assume our clients want something of Paris or of Europe,” he says. “We prefer to use the possibilities of Mexico. Maybe that’s why the place looks so playful and dramatic.”

M.N. Roy nightclub
Ludwig Godefroy
Emmanuel Picault
Photos: Ramiro Chavez