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ar house

ar july 03 house done

Marine curves
Using the traditional materials of the surrounding neo-vernacular seaside resort,
this holiday house explores memories of the German Organic and geological time.

H OUSE , G UERRERO , M EXICO

ARCHITECT
LCM/F ERNANDO R OMERO

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Ixtapa is in the state of

Guerrero, some 250km up the
coast from Acapulco, on the
Pacific coast of Mexico. Its
traditional name means the
white sand place, and its climate
ranges from humid, with heavy
tropical rains on summer nights,
when temperatures can reach
32C, to relatively dry in winter,
when the average temperature is
26C. Almost every day of the
year enjoys cloudless sunshine
during daylight hours.
The resort, which has grown
up over the past 30 years, has
been planned with some care to

1
Entrance side, looking through
the great room to pool and sea.
2, 3
The generous wall-less room
resembles a cave overlooking
the sea.

take advantage of the idyllic

climate. It has strong urban
design (or at least appearance)
rules, which include insistence
on using natural materials and
palapa (tropical thatch),* or at
least tejado (tiled) roofs. The
clients for Fernando Romeros
house wanted a place for family
reunions, where everyone could
enjoy the amazing site and sun.
Romeros basic strategy was
to make the ground floor into
the general or public area, while
the upper one is devoted to
bedrooms for visiting family
members. The tour de force is

the very large living room that

looks out over the evergreen
garden, beach pool and sea
through a huge, unglazed
opening, made possible by the
climate. The curving plan creates
a diagram that seems to have the
pattern of a rather complicated
cell seen under a microscope.
The great room opens to the
south under a covered terrace.
To the north are the more
utilitarian service rooms and the
master bedroom, the latter
positioned so that the place can
become a flat when no visitors
are staying. In three dimensions,

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the space resembles a cave,

gradually carved out from a
massive boulder by the action
of the sea.
As the resorts rules demand,
walls are sculpted out of white
rendered masonry, and there
is a shallow thatched roof. The
big span of the public area and
the long cantilevers are, of
course, generated by using an
inner concrete structure
that is masked by the flowing
white masonry. The place is
an evocative echo of the

Page 74

Einstein-Trm school of organic

architecture strangely translated
to the tropics. CRISPIN HEWS
* Traditionally, a palapa is an open-sided
dwelling with a thatched roof made of dried
palm leaves: or any structure that is opensided and thatched with palm leaves.
Architect
LCM/Fernando Romero
Job architect: Alfonso Salem
Design team: Fernando Romero, Juan Pablo
Maza, Mark Seligson, Tatiana Bilbao, Ernesto
Gadea, Jacinta Garatachia, Mauricio
Rodriguez, Victor Jaime, Aaron Hernandez
Structural engineer
Fernando Carrillo

H OUSE , G UERRERO , M EXICO

ARCHITECT
LCM/F ERNANDO R OMERO

4
The staircase follows the
continuous curve of the wall.
5
The television room is a cave
within a cave.

j
e

e
j

e
j

first floor
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
j

entrance
kitchen
television
master bedroom
bath
public space
terrace
pool
bedroom

h
a
f

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ground floor (scale approx 1:200)