Along the dirt-track roads of mellow Punta Zicatela, at the southernmost point of Puerto Escondido in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, the latest architectural project along the region’s Pacific Coast feels more like an ancient temple than the beach town’s latest boutique hotel.
Inspired by the pyramids built hundreds to thousands of years ago by Mexico’s ancient and living cultures, such as that of the Maya and Mexica, as well as the foremost water reservoirs from around the world—from the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul, an underground water storage facility known for its larger-than-life, upside-down Medusa heads built in the sixth century A.D. by the Byzantine emperor Justinian, to the subterranean Finsbury Park Reservoir in London, which holds around 5 million gallons of water —the brutalist Casa To, which opened this fall, stands as an ode to the interplay between the functional and the surreal.
Photo: Jaime Navarro
The real estate developers Surreal Estate commissioned the French-born, Mexico-based architect Ludwig Godefroy to design the environmentally-consciousness boutique hotel as something like a fortress on the beach; a structure to stand the test of time. Defying more modern interpretations of architecture by eliminating any unnecessary materials that would be damaged after years of use and inclement weather, Godefroy used a clean and abstract architectural approach at Casa To—one that will only improve with age.
“My research of simplicity leads me to create clean and abstract architecture composed exclusively of massive materials,” says Godefroy. That’s why this brutalist-style home is composed exclusively of steel, concrete, clay, and parota wood sourced from tropical Guanacaste trees.
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