Casa del Mar
Project Overview
A 3 bedroom Caribbean home planned, designed, and built in-house based on a brief from the client for his first holiday home. The concept of the house is designed to contain only 3 types of materials – wood, steel, and stone.
This way the client’s requirements were fulfilled to have a home with futuristic and clean architecture mixed with modern living.
Location
Cancun, Quintana Roo
Size
410m2
Project Cost
US$400,000
Rooms
4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
Caribbean Home Challenges
Climate and the surrounding environment
The location of the house on the Riviera Maya in Mexico is located very close to the beach therefore a real wood material was not fully suitable to be used as it would require a lot more costly maintenance Therefore as the Architect I chose to use as an alternative – plastic wood. This achieves an even better effect of “wood” than the real material itself but requires way lower maintenance cost.
Outdoors pool with moving shade
One of the main requirements for the outdoor area was to reduce the sun exposure while in the water, without having to be limited by certain hours of the day only in which they can use the pool.
The way, I solved this problem was by creating a “game of shadows” above the pool.
I introduced a roof above the water which is also the foundation of the bedrooms for the second floor. Taking into consideration the location of the house and that of the sun, I made the sun’s shadow formed by the second floor of the house and two extra wooden walls, to cover 1/3 of the pool at all times, but to change positions over the water, depending on the time of the day. That way the homeowners can use different parts of the pool at all times.
Blueprints
