Suuel Living Apartments by CAAM is a three-story residential building in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, that concentrates eleven dwellings, communal space, and a rooftop lookout within a compact square volume. Set among palms near Playa Los Tamarindos, the project uses a central circulation void, shaded terraces, and a restrained material palette to mediate between dense coastal occupation and an open-air domestic life.
Suuel Living Apartments Technical Information
- Architects: CAAM
- Location: Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico
- Gross Area: 719.50 m2 | 7,744 Sq. Ft.
- Project Year: 2026
- Photographs: © Zaickz Moz
Calm is organized, not improvised.
– CAAM
Coastal Context and a Compact Residential Footprint
Suuel Living occupies a 298.5 square meter site within the palm canopy of Playa Los Tamarindos, on the coast of Puerto Escondido. The building stands several hundred meters back from the Pacific shoreline, where dense vegetation, sandy ground, informal access roads, and low-scale neighboring structures continue to define the immediate setting. Rather than spreading accommodation across the site, CAAM consolidates the program in a near-square, three-story block. This decision preserves a larger proportion of the ground as permeable gravel court, planted edges, access space, and a small shared pool area.
The project is presented as the first component of a broader three-building framework that also includes Guava and Panorama. That larger proposition addresses a consequential condition along the Oaxaca coast: the transition from a landscape of temporary visitation to one of increasingly permanent occupation. Residential density in this context cannot be separated from water use, vegetation loss, privacy, access, and the tendency for new construction to reproduce generic coastal imagery. Suuel Living does not resolve these wider pressures on its own, but its compact footprint takes a clear stand against dispersing individual units across the palm grove.
Eleven apartments, communal amenities, and rooftop access are compressed into 719.5 square meters of built area. This concentration produces a building that is visibly denser than the surrounding low structures, yet its footprint remains legible and finite. The low-pitched hipped roof moderates the apparent height from distant views through the trees, while the regular volume gives the project a collective presence rather than the fragmented character of a series of isolated rental villas.
Square Geometry, Central Void, and Circulation as Spatial Order
The square is the principal ordering device of Suuel Living. It appears in the compact roof plan, the structural logic of the elevations, the distribution of units around the core, and the square pool positioned outside the ground-floor common area. Seen from above, the olive-green roof makes this geometry explicit: concentric square lines step toward a central opening, turning the roof plane into a diagram of the building below. The plan is not simply symmetrical for compositional effect. It establishes a repeatable framework through which many apartments can share a single vertical circulation system.
At the center, a folded cast-concrete stair rises around a square void. The stair is treated as more than a service element. Its continuous flights form a spatial chamber that organizes arrival, orientation, and vertical movement through the building. A skylight above the void draws daylight down through the three levels, while shadows from the slender black steel balustrades register the changing position of the sun against lime-plastered walls. Timber apartment doors and pale polished concrete landings frame this interior sequence, giving each level a direct relationship to the shared core.
The regular grid is deliberately interrupted at its edges. Rounded balcony corners soften the orthogonal mass, while curved bathroom partitions introduce local deviations within apartment plans. Projecting terraces expand the square perimeter without dissolving it, and a cylindrical circulation tower at one corner accommodates an external white spiral stair leading to the roof lookout. These exceptions prevent the diagram from becoming overly rigid. They also distinguish between the formal order required to manage density and the looser spatial conditions associated with domestic occupation, outlook, and bodily movement.
Thresholds Between Apartment, Terrace, and Landscape
The eleven units are arranged according to a clear vertical hierarchy. The ground floor contains three apartments alongside the common lounge and pool area. Five units occupy the first level, while the upper floor contains three larger apartments, including double-height lofts with private spiral stairs to mezzanine spaces. This distribution gives the uppermost dwellings access to the pitched timber roof volume, while the lower levels establish a closer relationship to the shared garden and pool court.
Each apartment includes a terrace, and these spaces operate as inhabitable thresholds rather than as narrow exterior appendages. Full-height sliding openings allow interior rooms to open toward the palm canopy, while sheer linen curtains filter glare and maintain a degree of visual privacy. Fine steel railings keep the balcony edges visually light, and rows of potted tropical plants thicken the transition between domestic interiors and the surrounding vegetation. On the upper levels, the terraces place occupants at canopy height, making the palms an immediate visual field rather than a distant view.
The ground floor develops a more collective sequence. A cast-concrete ramp runs beside broad shallow steps, descending toward a sunken common lounge. The lowered floor level increases separation from the access route without enclosing the space entirely. A large framed opening aligns the lounge with the square plunge pool beyond, establishing a visual axis between sheltered seating, water, gravel, and planting. The pool is embedded directly within the gravel court and enclosed by terracotta-red coping, making it read as a constructed void in the ground rather than an autonomous resort object.
Material Restraint, Climate Mediation, and Roofscape
The material palette is deliberately limited: hand-floated lime plaster, fair-faced concrete, raw pine, pale polished concrete, black steel, terracotta, and olive-green roof coating. These materials are assembled through tonal contrast rather than ornament. Sand-coloured plaster shifts from near-white in strong daylight to warmer pink and gold tones at sunset. Concrete provides weight at the stair, soffits, benches, and entry sequence, while timber introduces a lighter grain within the roof structure and interior joinery. The result is a building whose material character relies on texture, shadow, and weathering potential.
The hipped roof is central to both climate control and architectural expression. Its broad eaves extend beyond all four facades, shading full-height glazing and balcony slabs during periods of intense sun. Exposed pine rafters remain visible beneath the overhang, giving the roof a tectonic thickness that is absent from the more planar plaster walls below. At its center, the small square roof opening aligns with the stair void and skylight, linking the exterior roofscape to the internal circulation chamber. The roof therefore works simultaneously as a protective canopy, a formal cap, and a device for bringing daylight into the building’s deepest interior zone.
Several facade details calibrate the scale of the compact block. A stepped crenelated parapet runs beneath the eaves, creating a horizontal shadow line that softens the transition between wall and roof. Rounded balcony slabs project from the plastered mass, edged with thin vertical steel railings that preserve views and ventilation. Small square punched openings punctuate more solid wall surfaces, contrasting with the larger glazed terrace fronts. At the north-east corner, the cylindrical circulation tower rises through the roofline, its irregularly placed openings and external spiral stair marking the route to the rooftop lookout while introducing a vertical counterpoint to the otherwise square composition.
About CAAM
Architects Camilo Moreno Oliveros and Daniel Moreno Ahuja lead CAAM. For Suuel Living in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, the studio organizes residential density through a symmetrical grid, a central circulation void, shaded terraces, and a material palette of lime plaster, concrete, timber, steel, and terracotta.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Construction company: CIMERA – Hector Anselmo, Maria Anselmo
- Other contributors: Photography by Zaickz Moz
- Other contributors: Press agency by MOS-S Agency
- Research references or publications: Suuel | Tres Refugios, CAAM
