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Architects: AS Arquitectura
- Year: 2019
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Photographs:Manolo R Solis
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Manufacturers: Comex, MIDO
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Lead Architects: Xavier Antonio Abreu Sacramento, Alejandra Abreu Sacramento
Text description provided by the architects. Bungalows Luxury Tulum is a private condominium of 9 apartments located in the Aldea Zama development, in the heart of the Mayan Village in Tulum, Quintana Roo. Within this development, the master plan determined areas for locating buildings, parking areas, and jungle zones, so that the land for the building was already free from green area restrictions and boundaries as these zones were already assigned around it. This condition not only reduces the program to work on but also leaves us with less surface area to work on free and green spaces within the design of our complex.
The approach to solving the scheme began with the intention of giving each apartment its area of contact with the exterior so that each one could enjoy a private outdoor area despite the dimensions and conditions of the land complicating this intention. To achieve this, modulation of the spatial structure in plan and elevation was proposed, allowing us to generate two types of apartments: on the ground floor, 3 garden-type apartments that would have their own patio or interior garden occupying two modules on the plan each, allocating one for the social area and another for the bedrooms so that the social areas could have openings to the north and south to achieve adequate cross ventilation and greater spatiality by opening at both ends to interior gardens; the bedrooms, in turn, also open to an interior garden each.
On the following levels, apartments are laid out occupying one module on the plan and two modules in elevation, meaning there are 6 two-level apartments, each with a rooftop. This arrangement results in each apartment having a rooftop terrace that overlooks and has contact with the treetops of the adjacent jungle.
To achieve private patios on both sides of the apartments and to maintain privacy in the views from the apartments towards the circulation areas, the articulating element of the stairs and horizontal circulations was designed as a separate body from the building, with the patios in between and connected by bridges to the apartment entrances. This element has a lighter formal expression, being a metallic structure with roofs, railings, and wattle walls.
The result is therefore a circulation element linked to a 3-level block that groups the apartments, with a materiality based on construction systems of the region, such as joists, vaults, blocks with finishes in chukum tree resin stucco, stone walls, and wattle. This ensures that the materials help the building integrate with the colors and textures of the surrounding jungle context. Through the fluidity of its interior spaces and its materials, the complex coexists with the jungle, which is the protagonist of the place, intending for the building to blend into it over time.
