Casa en Palmilla is a 600-square-meter house in the desert hills of Los Cabos, organized as four independent volumes under two L-shaped roofs. Its architecture is defined less by formal display than by the calibration of shade, airflow, and controlled openness, using a central courtyard, deep overhangs, and a restrained material palette to mediate between domestic life and an arid coastal landscape.
Casa en Palmilla Technical Information
- ArchitectsESTUDIO Ignacio Urquiza Ana Paula de Alba
- LocationLos Cabos, Mexico
- Gross Area600 m2 | 6,458 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years2025
- Photographs© Ignacio Urquiza Luna Parra
The house is organized through shade, void, and orientation, allowing each part of the program to relate precisely to climate, privacy, and the landscape.
– Ignacio Urquiza Seoane
Climate Responsive Roofscape and Desert Siting
Set into the hills of Los Cabos, the house adopts a low profile that reduces visual contrast with the dry terrain. Its sand-colored concrete massing, clay roofscape, and sparse desert planting align the building with the site’s tonal range rather than set it apart from it. In distant views, the project reads as an extension of the hillside, with only the roof ridges and vertical service elements briefly distinguishing the architecture from the topography.
This quiet siting strategy is reinforced by the roof design. Two lightweight L-shaped roof structures define the entire composition, their deep 2.1-meter overhangs functioning as the primary environmental device. In a hot and exposed climate, shade becomes not an accessory but the basis of form. The broad eaves protect walls and glazing, temper heat gain, and create an intermediate perimeter zone where the house is neither fully enclosed nor entirely open.
The approach sequence develops this environmental logic at the scale of movement. Broad concrete steps rise through gravel and native vegetation, including agaves, cacti, and low-desert species, producing a gradual shift from the open hillside to the sheltered threshold. By the time one reaches the house, the overhanging roof has already established a microclimate of shadow and reduced glare, framing entry as a transition in temperature, light, and pace.
Courtyard as Spatial Regulator
The project is organized around a trapezoidal courtyard formed by four independent volumes beneath the two roof systems. This open space is not residual. It is the principal ordering device of the plan, structuring circulation, visual exchange, and orientation between the separate parts of the house. The non-orthogonal geometry prevents the courtyard from becoming static or ceremonial. Instead, it operates as a field of shifting alignments, with each side producing a different spatial condition.
Its enclosure is carefully incomplete. One short side remains open toward the western mountains, admitting distance into an otherwise controlled interior world. Another edge serves the guest rooms through a covered passage. A third is defined by a perforated wall of 20-by-20-centimeter openings that screens the main suite while allowing softened daylight to pass through. The final side is the glazed social volume, the only major space that opens directly and fully onto the courtyard.
This nearly blind arrangement gives the courtyard a regulating role. It filters views rather than offering them indiscriminately, distributes light without full exposure, and permits cross ventilation while preserving privacy. In photographs, the gravel surface, planted beds, and scattered boulders intensify the sense of the courtyard as a measured void, one that mediates between the dense material presence of the house and the wider desert horizon beyond.
Programmatic Separation and Flexible Occupation
The plan divides the house into four distinct volumes, each assigned a clear programmatic role. One contains service functions such as parking, storage, laundry, and mechanical spaces. A second accommodates the guest rooms. A third holds the main suite together with two walk-in closets and a study. The fourth forms the social bar, combining living, dining, and kitchen functions in a single elongated room. This separation allows each part to respond directly to orientation, privacy requirements, and patterns of use.
The two primary wings also support flexible occupation. The house can function with only the main suite and social spaces in use, effectively operating as a smaller one-bedroom dwelling. When needed, the secondary wing with guest rooms can be activated without altering the plan’s legibility. This adaptability is embedded in the architecture itself rather than added through movable partitions or mechanical transformations. The result is a domestic layout that accommodates fluctuating occupancy while maintaining spatial coherence.
Within the guest rooms, this logic continues at the interior scale. A freestanding wooden volume contains bathroom and dressing functions while remaining detached from the roof plane. By stopping short of full enclosure, the insert preserves the sense of a larger unified room and avoids fragmenting the ceiling volume. Similar spatial restraint appears in the suite corridor, where oak paneling on one side and filtered light on the other create a compressed yet continuous passage rather than a conventional hallway.
Material Continuity, Structure, and Interior Atmosphere
The house relies on a tightly controlled material palette of textured concrete, laminated oak, clay tile, and natural textiles. This restraint gives prominence to surface, depth, and shadow rather than contrast or ornament. The concrete is not polished into abstraction but left tactile, able to register changing light and retain a certain thermal stability. Oak softens this mineral framework, especially in ceilings, doors, and built-in elements, while clay roof tiles connect the building to regional construction traditions without resorting to imitation.
The principal living volume is where structure and atmosphere are most clearly fused. A pitched exposed oak roof spans the room, establishing a single continuous interior for living, dining, and kitchen. At its center, a raw concrete fireplace rises through the ridge as both divider and anchor, organizing the space without severing it. Along both longitudinal sides, 12-meter glazed openings slide away, converting the room from an enclosed hall to a covered terrace. This capacity for complete lateral opening makes the room less an interior box than a climate-moderated platform between courtyard, pool, and distant sea.
Interior elements are treated as continuations of the architecture rather than separate decorative layers. The oak kitchen island, stone surfaces, linen curtains, woven seating, and carefully placed artworks all operate within the same tonal and tectonic system. What emerges is not neutrality in the generic sense but a calibrated domestic atmosphere in which material temperature, filtered desert light, and measured visual density shape everyday experience. The architecture remains legible because furnishings and finishes do not compete with the structure. They extend the logic of continuity, restraint, and environmental moderation.
About ESTUDIO Ignacio Urquiza Ana Paula de Alba
ESTUDIO Ignacio Urquiza Ana Paula de Alba is an architecture and design studio based in Mexico City. Founded in 2019, the practice approaches each project through functionality, programmatic clarity, and contextual sensitivity, with a focus on architecture and design that respond to contemporary climatic challenges, local culture, and an economy of means.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Client: Private
- Construction company: Emiliano Zedillo
- Furniture and Decoration by Alejandra Usobiaga
- Furniture and Decoration Team: Vanessa Lira, Daniela Sofia Nunez
- Art Consultants: Galería KAYA, Mariel Prieto, Alejandra Usobiaga
- Lighting Design: ILWT, Miguel Angel Vega
- Project Photography: Ignacio Urquiza Luna Parra
- Interior Photography: Ana Paula Alvarez
