Designer Villa in Punta Garrobo

This 5,350-square-foot beach house in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, designed by HW Studio, draws its material palette directly from conditions already present on the site. The ground finish is colored and textured to match the nearby beach sand, while the white of the walls echoes the nine cacalosuchil trees whose flowers surround the property.

The design reduces the building to three elements: a ground plane, a roof, and the shadow between them. The layout is based on the enramada, the open-sided shade structure common along this stretch of coast, treating shelter from sun and rain as the project's only fixed requirement. The ground extends that logic underfoot before it registers visually, carrying the texture of the beach sand into the shaded interior so that the site is felt through the feet before it's read by the eye.

From the street, the house presents as a sealed white volume, its boundary marked by a single curved concrete wall that follows the line of the road. Vegetation and the site's topography reinforce this closed street face, withholding the interior from view until a visitor commits to walking the entry sequence rather than glimpsing it from the sidewalk. That sequence resolves at a circular courtyard, cut directly from the same white volume facing the street. Removing this section of mass changes what the wall does: instead of closing the plan, it becomes an edge, open to sky, sunlight, and the crowns of surrounding trees, orienting a visitor's gaze upward toward the canopy rather than back toward the enclosure just passed through. Beyond the courtyard, the roof thins into little more than a shading plane, and the walls give way to the line where the ocean meets the sky.

The property offers five bedrooms accommodating up to ten guests, with a private chef included, set within a landscape where the sea forms an infinite horizon and a portion of jungle occupies the site with an almost sacred presence — light, flowers, stones, trees, and countless living things coming together in an experience that exists even before the architecture does. It's a place designed for discerning travelers seeking space to unwind and reconnect with the people they cherish most.