It’s never too late to start anew. For Paul and Rachel Vanden Bout, that meant teetering into the unknown and building a new life abroad—at the age of 86.

While visiting Oaxaca, Mexico, the couple fell for a hillside lot with sweeping desert views and began to imagine a new way of living. It wasn’t just a whim—their son and daughter-in-law, NV Design Architecture principals Tom Vanden Bout and Brenda Nelson, had designed a home of their own just across the road.

When the parcel hit the market, Paul and Rachel decided that, after years of building a life in Virginia, it was time to take the leap. “It was such an adventure,” says Tom, who designed the property for his now-neighboring parents. “It’s hard to believe they’ve done it.”

Designed by NV Design Architecture, Rachel and Paul’s home is crafted from poured-in-place concrete with custom steel-and-glass windows and doors, plaster-finished interior partitions, and local hardwood cabinetry." layout="wide" credit="Amy Bello" photoUserId=""/>

They initially had a modest vision. “We dreamed of a little casita,” says Rachel. But as plans evolved, so did the program, and they wound up adding space for visiting family, a workshop for Paul’s woodworking pastime, and a floor plan that would permit living on one level.

The result is Casa Cielo, a cast-in-place concrete home composed of four barrel vaults arranged around an interior courtyard. Each barrel vault is just one room wide, which keeps the scale intimate, and the ends upon up to light, air, and views. The first vault at the street contains the entry, the kitchen (with a bar and little sink, per Rachel’s request), service areas, and the main bathroom along with an outdoor spa.

The primary suite and the dining room are located in vaults two and three, which are separated by an interior courtyard planted with cacti. All of the gardens are immediately accessible, so Paul and Rachel can tend to them with ease.

“Your entire day is spent around the gardens, whether inside or outside or cooking or eating,” says Tom. “It’s a really nice, controlled space, and the light changes in a really nice way. You can almost tell what time it is.”

The fourth vault is for leisure. Past the office, where you can see paw prints in the concrete left by street dogs that passed through the construction site, a living room leads to a slight barrel bend toward the Sierra Norte mountain range. The floor’s plan is completed by a large covered terrace, where the homeowners have made a nightly routine of taking in the views—and a cocktail.

With carte blanche on the design, Tom leaned into a restrained material palette. The concrete vaults are deliberately rough and unfinished—less Tadao Ando and more, as Tom puts it, “almost found.” The visible formwork marks give the space a tactile, imperfect quality that contrasts with the precision of the steel-and-glass enclosures. “It was important that the end was a single piece of arched glass—that was a challenge,” says Tom. “On one hand it’s a mess, but it’s also poetic. You see all the little bits.”

For Paul and Rachel, it’s the rhythm of daily life that defines the home. Paul, who shares his son’s interest in design, spends his days in the woodshop below, crafting Gerrit Rietveld furniture replicas. They’ve taken up learning Spanish with a local tutor, make regular trips to the mercado, and have become familiar faces in the neighborhood. “It’s a completely different notion of community,” says Tom. “It’s about relationships—within family and beyond.”

What started as a visit, and then a house, has become a way of life, one that keeps them thinking, learning, and curious about their new culture. As Paul put it, “You get a lot of credit being old and moving to Mexico.”

Related Reading:

A Pair of New York Architects Build the Home of Their Dreams in Oaxaca

This Beach House in Mexico Frames the Landscape With an Orderly Concrete Grid

An Artist Lets the Wind and Wildlife of Oaxaca Flow Through Her Radically Open Home

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: NV Design Architecture / @nvdesignarchitecture

Landscape Design: Paisajismo Velasquez / @paisajismo_velasquez

Also Appears In

They Built a Unique Barrel-Vaulted Home—and a New Life in Oaxaca—at 86 Years Old