Open-Air Holiday Home in Zicatela Beach, Mexico

Balanced between the mountains and the sea on the south-west coast of Mexico, Casa Zicatela is a concrete marvel and the latest collaborative project to emerge from the studio of architect Ludwig Godefroy and designer and furnisher Emmanuel Picault. Though both Ludwig and Emmanuel hail from Normandy in France, the duo met in Mexico and their work to date draws on both modernist and pre-Hispanic ideas and influences. In the case of Casa Zicatela, the beach house has been modelled on the shape and structure of a Mesoamerican ball court, with a central corridor flanked by hefty, symmetrical stepped walls.

From the outside, the three-bedroom home is a brutalist bunker – square and unassuming. Upon entry, geometric lines create light and shadow and reveal the quiet open-air sanctuary within, replete with a garden and a plunge pool. Rendered almost entirely in exposed board-marked concrete, this holiday house features no glass and only a series of adjustable timber shutters and doors that open out and segment various rooms.

Steps ascend to Casa Zicatela’s open rooftop, where the light of Mexico’s Oaxaca region drenches the concrete. In the centre of the home is a covered patio, which features a kitchen at one end, and a low, wide table made from a slice of a tree trunk at the other.

Two bedrooms lie at either side of the moat-like swimming pool; the third is contained within an angled volume accessed via a bridge across the water. Designed as an escape from busy Mexico City, Casa Zicatela is a fortress, where only the sunlight and sky are allowed in.