The Punta Caliza Hotel by Estudio Macías Peredo is located in the Holbox Island in Quintana Roo, Mexico. Unlike the typical beach resort, it doesn't face the coast but rather closes itself into its flooded courtyard, referencing the nearby mangrove swamp.
This hotel by Estudio Macías Peredo is composed by three single-storey strips of rooms, built with a wooden structure and a straw covered roof, as well as a tower to house the services.
These structures are built like palapas, learned from Mayan architecture, lifted from the ground to cope with the island's changing conditions resulting from water level rising.
The heart of the project, a flooded courtyard, references the island's mangrove swamps. Apart from containing the services, the tower also allows views over the manglar, the island and the sea.
Description of project by Estudio Macías Peredo
The beach is remote on this occasion. In a "residual" piece of land, without facing the sea and near the untouchable boundary of the mangrove, three structural bays contain this hotel's own aquatic landscape. Three long straw covers house the rooms without touching each other. In this way they allow the palapa to keep its clear, simple construction.
This archaic logic, learned from the Mayan house, allows the walls to be freed from their structural task. with the walls liberated, the room is sheltered among the water, which sneaks in from the flooded patio, and a brief reminder of the mangrove that inhabits the island of Holbox. Resting under a palapa built of solid and fragrant cedar, experienced as a space, is the premise of all rooms, which for this reason do not allow a second floor.
Against the simple pragmatic reasoning of crossing the circulations in the center and in front of the rooms, the walkers are carried to the perimeter of the property. The heart of the project can only be inhabited wet, preferably resting. The small hotel rises from the land to negotiate sea rises on an island that is unstable. Or it anticipates that condition with his flooded cloister, depending on how you see it.
In the narrowest angle of the project, like a keel, a tower accommodates the services. At the same time it allows to lean over the mangrove towards the two bodies of water that define that strip of land that we call Holbox.
