The Staterra hotel project is located in the state of Baja California Sur, thirty minutes from San Jose del Cabo. It is located on the Sea of Cortez, in a semi-desert and arid zone, with alluvial deposits, sand and gravel; in a place away from human settlements, which makes it private and silent, and an incredible natural wealth of an unexplored site.
The need to make a tourism development that generates the least possible environmental impact is considered. In our profession, that translates into architecture that blends with the environment and the nature of the place, low-density buildings and height and use of local materials for construction.
The lotification is done with complete circles or subdivided into quarters or halves, and the roads that connect everything meander between the circular lots to arrive or the different spaces. The volumes are carefully placed in areas chosen to respect runoff and areas of topographic accidents to avoid making aggressive movements of land.
The development is divided into 35 hotel rooms and a presidential suite, 17 villas, amenities area and service area. The separation between all the volumes studied to offer the greatest privacy possible.
Each of these has different languages. The hotel rooms are pure cubes rotated and intercepted by circles that generate a change of material and a hybrid volume, with terraces and pools in the interior. However, the set is a composition of rock and reddish-brown lands.
The villas are born from the interconnection of cubes that rotate on their axis to form different configurations of voids and patios; besides generating 3 different types of villas, each of them adapting to different and changing topographies. Each villa is formed by the union of 3 to 5 volumes. The roofs of each of them have a different inclination but are connected by their vertices, making a continuous and unfolded facade.
The set of amenities refers to the reference of the ruins and the classical historical architecture of various periods of architecture, you can easily make associations with Athens, Roman architecture of the second century and Renaissance architecture, alluding to a divine architecture where it tries to elevate the concept of relaxation of a traditional tourist complex, giving a mystical and sacred approach. A set of different compositions of arches and half-buried volumes complete the set.
The use of compacted earth as a construction system throughout the complex, made with local land banks, is a main construction material that also guarantees better thermal efficiency that adapts to the climatic conditions of place, combined with other construction systems. Block walls finished with lime to give hygiene and texture to the spaces, besides being a language traditionally facing the sea.
The compacted earth blends with the landscape. The landscape design is made with cactus and different species of desert plants, it is wanted to preserve the aspect little intervention by the hand of man. The whole set of rooms and villas has green roofs to guarantee better weather conditions.