Concrete palapa house

PUERTO ESCONDIDO, OAXACA, MEXICO 2019.

Puerto Escondido is a hideaway frequented by surfers from all over the world.  The owners of Concrete Palapa House, Venezuelan artist Deborah Castillo and chef Alonso Nuñez, bought the land for their second home in this spot removed from civilization, with a view of peanut fields (arachis hypogaea) facing the sea.  It is a simple house that includes the artist’s workshop, where the couple will spend a good part of the year, primarily during the surfing season.The couple first defined their wish list.  The house would be on two levels:  upstairs there would be two bedrooms, and downstairs, the living room, bathroom, and kitchen.  From the start the house was meant to be open and comfortable, per the owner’s requirements, as he wished to preside over the culinary process in a welcoming and enjoyable way without being isolated from what was happening nearby.  Another request came directly from the clients’ wishes for the handmade roof construction technique used traditionally by the area’s residents –palapas (palm leaves)—a method consisting of weaving dried palm leaves and beams made of wood from those same palm trees (arecáceas).  The unusual slope of the gable roof, steeper than that traditionally used by native builders in the area, allowed introducing some rarely seen changes.  In some parts of the house, the palm covering reaches down to touch the floor, which has allowed, in many cases, doing away with traditional vertical walls, thanks to the single continuous plane of the large natural roof.The house is very light.  The only rooms with solid walls are the bathroom and part of the kitchen; the rest of the downstairs is totally open to the outdoors and enjoys the spectacular view offered by a very special staircase which, in addition to its use for going upstairs and downstairs, becomes a center of activity.  Residents can sit, cook, place objects, and use it to view the infinite landscape of western Mexico’s Pacific Ocean.

Text by Ana María Marín, for the magazine Pandora # 1

November, 2019

Architecture:

Arch. Ana Lasala

Arch. Isabel Lasala