Local studio Reyes Ríos + Larraín Arquitectos stretched out a beach house along a narrow plot and coated it with rose-coloured stucco on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.
Completed in 2024 in Dzemul, Yucatán, the San Bruno Beach House has 700 square meters of built area separated into three pavilions on a 1,460 square meters property — creating a series of solids and voids with public and private areas on a plot that is only 10 meters wide.
“This implantation strategy allows not only the breeze to flow free along the compound, it also makes possible to maximize and to experience the views to the sea in front of the property as well as to the lagoon at the rear in multiple ways,” Reyes Ríos + Larraín Arquitectos told Dezeen.
The pavilions are set as narrow prismatic elements along the site, offset from each other to maximize airflow and views, while reducing the visual obstructions of neighboring properties.
The arrangement allows residents to discover the surroundings in different moments, like the pergola perched on top of the dining pavilion that serves as a sight-seeing platform that creates “a strong sense of connection with a respectful sense of belonging to the site’s nature “.
Each block is raised on concrete stilts behind the sand dunes to minimize the impact of the house on the environment and vice versa.
Residents enter from the south end of the site, where a small studio block – with a hammocked sleeping area, kitchenette, bathroom, and storage spaces – holds the corner of the property. The linear courtyard is broken by a shaded parking structure.
The main residence’s three two-story structures are connected by elevated concrete pathways on the ground level and bridges and exterior hallways on the upper level.
“All the living spaces, even bathrooms and services, features natural cross ventilation that can be graduated for different wind scenarios (storms, hurricane and soft-calm) since all windows were designed as a hybrid composition of glass with aluminum louvers than can be operated manually in order to control the quantity of natural light and wind from the exterior,” the team said.
“To achieve that, any openings on the facades were carefully oriented to maximize the gain of breeze and to minimize the gain of direct sun.”
All of the interior and exterior walls are plastered with a rose-pigmented mortar by Mexican cement company Cemex. The coloured stucco finish eliminates the need for future painting and reduces maintenance caused by the site’s hard weather.
The rest of the material palette is intentionally restricted to local materials – like bamboo, limestone, and subtropical hardwood – that were chosen to “balance local resources with good performance against the strong local climate conditions, in contrast to the industrial ones that will ensure the buildings to last for decades”.
Other Mexican homes that feature a signature pink stucco finish include a renovated apartment block in Querétaro by Heryco and a housing complex with interlocking units in Tulum by Coyote Arquitectura.
The photography is by Edmund Sumner .
Project credits:
Architecture: Reyes Ríos + Larraín Arquitectos
Design team: Salvador Reyes Ríos, Josefina Larraín Lagos
Team member: Andrés Saenz Coral
General contractor: Alberto Esquivel, Diego Caamal
Pigmented mortar supplier: CEMEX
