Ixtapa House

View of the villa with its entrance guiding sight to the ocean that lies beyond it

The Building

The house is built on a private beach on the Pacific Ocean coastline and was designed to celebrate its extraordinary site. The traditional Mexican beach-house is constructed with a number of wooden columns that carry a high palapa roof. This allows the sea breeze to pass through the palapa and ventilate the space in this hot and humid climate.

View of the living room from within the villa overlooking the ocean

The design brief proposed a number of challenges of which the response to the ocean was most critical. Further, keeping the site in mind, the client required a high degree of privacy to be clearly established around the living space which he envisaged as a communal area to receive a high number of guests, and which was intimate and protected at the same time. The client also wished for the 9-bedroom villa to be modest in its vocabulary.

The swimming pool in the house is completely open to the ocean

The design adopts the vernacular typology and the living-area is thus a semi-open space shaded by the roof. However, since the client wanted a more closed and intimate space, the columns were replaced by two organic volumes that close off direct views from the inland.

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