Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, Mexico
Gracia Studio
Post By:Kitticoon Poopong
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
Located in the town where the hotel California sits. One hour south of La Paz
Baja California Sur.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
There is a small magical town called Todos Santos. In witch our client had a vision of developing this 50,000 square foot lot and designing two houses, one for beach house rental and the other one as a vacation home.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
The town itself is a place to enjoy nature, enjoy the traditions of a typical Mexican calmed town and of course the good food of the well known restaurants as the Café Santa fe.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
The challenge for this project was mainly in how to approach not only the design part of the project but the technical difficulties and the cost efficiency of the project, the lack of good labor and the high cost involved in the construction materials give us no other option then conceptualizing the design into a project where everything that was build and all the labor that it will be required will need to be LOCAL.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
This way we created a platform of working people that needed to be trained and supervised by part of our team and the other constraint is that we had to utilize only materials that you can buy in the small “pueblo” with only two hardware stores.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
So that’s how everything started, in 2006 we started by defining the final budget as the main goal and the design had to be implicit in the final design of the house.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
The project consists of two equal houses, in which each of them had to be private and at the same time keep the ocean views. To accomplish that we designed a one story house that allow to keep the 180degree ocean view for both of the houses and creating an indoor-outdoor area as the heart of the house.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
The house itself consist in two basic materials one to be the exposed concrete walls that matches the existing color of the sand and the second one to be the “talavera” tile considered a typical material in México since the Spanish conquest.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Sandra Munoz |
With a total square footage of 3,400 the house consists of 3 bedrooms and two bathrooms and the main area to be the kitchen dining and living to be opened to the pool and terrace. Since the most important for us as the architect was to create a place where people can enjoy company of friends and family and at the same time enjoy nature and get to the basics of life. At the end we believe that the most important things in life are not material so we materialize our beliefs.
Description from the Architects:
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| floor plan--drawing © Courtesy of Gracia Studio |
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| roof plan--drawing © Courtesy of Gracia Studio |
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| elevations--drawing © Courtesy of Gracia Studio |
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| section--drawing © Courtesy of Gracia Studio |
Project Data
Project name: Todos Santos House
Location: Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, Mexico
Materials: Exposed Concrete, Talavera, Steel
Design: June 2006
Completion: September 2006
The people
Architects: Gracia Studio
Photographs: © Sandra Munoz
Note>>Location in this map, indicate city/country but not exact address.
