Todos Santos Houses / Gracia Studio

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© Sandra Muñoz

Architects: Gracia Studio
Location: Todos Santos, Baja California Sur,
Project Year: 2006
Photographs: Sandra Muñoz

Located in the town where the hotel California sits. One hour south of La Paz Baja California Sur. 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.

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.

© Sandra Muñoz

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. 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.

floor plan

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.

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.

© Sandra Muñoz

© Sandra Muñoz

The house itself consist in two basic materials one to be the exposed 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.

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.

* Location to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.
 
 
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V says:

“in witch”? you would think somebody proof read this

 
# September 16, 2010 at 11:10
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anon says:

Nice pool. The tiles on the wall and the skull are disgusting tho.

 
# September 17, 2010 at 05:02
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Mohammed says:

Wow this is a realy amazing building, i love the notion that contemporary buildings need not be presumtious and ‘perfect’. Realy captures the spirit of the place.
Well done!!

 
# September 17, 2010 at 09:15
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These twins are the best example of simplisity and high profesional standarts… Very fredly to enveronment, cheap, row materials… I would have one ofv them:)

 
# September 17, 2010 at 09:48
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oqd says:

do you really mean concrete in this desert!?
near todos santos is a production site with high quality bricks

another thing, i’d rather make a clear difference between the rental house and the vacation home, it seems now you have two bungalows for rent

 
# September 18, 2010 at 01:51
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Ana Tavares says:

Hi,
I’m doing a work for my school about this amazing project but the problem is that I can’t find much information about this: such as the exactly location (latitude, coordinate and angle), the climate, the ground, etc.
Can you please send me a site or a name of a book where I can find these details?

 
# November 28, 2010 at 11:05
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5:35 PM Sep 16th

Todos Santos Houses / Gracia Studio | ArchDaily http://t.co/mxPhaRs via @archdaily

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5:55 PM Sep 16th

Mano de obra de baja calidad y acabados locales tambien pueden dar buenos resultados. Una casa en Todos Santos (Mexico) http://bit.ly/dl3NUe

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7:58 PM Sep 16th

Todos Santos Houses / Gracia Studio | ArchDaily http://t.co/9HCGIZy via @archdaily

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9:01 PM Sep 16th

Todos Santos Houses / Gracia Studio http://j.mp/cycB2W

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9:14 PM Sep 16th

Reading: "Todos Santos Houses / Gracia Studio | ArchDaily"( http://twitthis.com/2b5eo5 )

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7:05 AM Sep 17th

リゾートもこんくらいヌケてるほうがいいかも Todos Santos Houses / Gracia Studio | ArchDaily http://t.co/Gv3fyIi

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11:26 AM Sep 17th

ArchDaily: Todos Santos Houses – Una casa de campo para pasar el día… http://bit.ly/a4R2YE

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2:31 AM Mar 30th

Todos los Santos Houses @ Baja California, Entendiendo el contexto! http://www.archdaily.com/77737/todos-santos-houses-gracia-studio/

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5:52 AM Apr 11th

Todos los Santos Houses @ Baja California, Entendiendo el contexto!… http://fb.me/YPqPVZP6

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