Cool Spaces: El Perdido Hotel by Estudio ALA

WORDS Cheri Morris IMAGES Iwaan Baan

El Perdido Hotel by Estudio ALA is a permeated structure that counters cultural corrosion by emulating the local area’s way of life and honouring Baja California Sur’s historical roots and material culture.

Located outside the small agricultural town of El Pescadero, El Perdido Hotel is a compound of vanished boundaries between dwellings and lush surrounds just 800 metres from the Pacific Ocean amidst farmlands of basil, chillies, tomatoes and strawberries. Its design features traditional construction techniques and materials: rammed-earth walls and thatched roofs typical of the southern point of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula. It is at once an ode to the past and a suggested blueprint for the future; centring customs of old and indigenous craftsmanship.

The rooms are not combined into a single building. Instead, guest quarters are dotted throughout the site, flowering from a central communal area that is free from walls and houses the lobby, restaurant, a sunken conversation pit with a water feature and a chapel. Smaller outbuildings feature timber-hewn roofs blanketed in thatch. Here, guests suites afford the feeling of standalone mini homes as opposed to hotel rooms.

Interiors continue the dialogue between habitat and inhabitants: exposed timber frames and hand-made wood finishes harmonise while a tall, hourglass-shaped structure makes the perfect lookout point for inhaling rolling landscapes and the white-horsed Pacific Ocean.

Looking for more architectural inspiration? Check out Casona Sforza by Alberto Kalach of Taller de Arquitectura X.

h/t: dezeen.com