Casa 13

Among the trees of Tulum’s jungle, a vacation home emerges, inviting exploration through its folded walls, which combine curves and straight lines to highlight the expressiveness of its geometry.

Casa 13 is a project that seeks to take advantage of the virtues of the Mayan Riviera privileged climate and the region's materials to break the typical housing scheme. The setbacks and rotations in the stacked volumes allow the house to open up to different outdoor spaces, whether through windows, skylights, or terraces. The house opens and closes like a Swiss army knife to compose countless different atmospheres with which the user feels the house as a much larger project.

Each wall and each support with the ground is taken as an opportunity in the composition of the whole: to fold and create intimate spaces, to unfold and open up to the outside, to attract the gaze towards a specific point or to hide from it.

The house also adapts its footprint to the existing trees on the land, integrating them into the project experience and accompanied by landscaping work carried out with tropical vegetation.
The use of a monochromatic color palette gives the project a monolithic and forceful appearance, in which the contrast is provided by different textures, instead of hue. From smooth finishes like the salmon-toned chukum, or Mayan Cream stone on the interior floors; to rough textures like Toh stone in vestibular spaces, stones from the excavation in the exterior walls, or concrete lattices. The use of tropical tzalam wood contrasts as an accent in the carpentry and furniture.

All furniture and decorative details have been manufactured by local or national carpenters and artisans, designed to fit each space in order to enhance its character

Architects: Jose Manuel Martin Amate/Margarita Lopez Cruz