Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca

Residential

2023

This project embodies a deep understanding of the site, aiming to craft a unique sense of place. The house serves as a tool, unveiling natural events specific to the context. Emphasizing outdoor spaces, modules create pathways and contemplative zones, defining boundaries between open and enclosed areas, enhancing the overall site experience.

Three gardens were conceived: The first, an expansive natural dune stretching from the living area to the ocean, ensures privacy with dense lateral foliage. A desert botanical garden, showcasing endemic species, serves as the centerpiece. The pavilion design, reflecting Oaxacan craftsmanship, employs local materials for a tactile experience. Masonry "solids" atop a concrete slab form habitable spaces. Wooden and palm-thatched palapas cover spaces between stone walls, creating private terraces. The resulting tectonic assembly anchors to the ground, ascending with defined edges.

Pavilions establish a visual language of repetition, playing with light and shadow through concrete, stone, and wood connections. The central pavilion, a "threshold of permanence," connects physically and visually to the dune and botanical garden, framing the Pacific Ocean to the west and Oaxacan mountains to the east. Interstitial spaces complement the project, providing access to rooms, inviting contemplation, and mapping light to the sky via an oculus in the concrete slab.