Close-up, it’s easy to overlook the architectural oasis fashioned from concrete, wood, and steel awaiting behind Casa TO’s half-door threshold. The hotel’s concrete clad exterior is draped in boa scarves of vines, with palms reaching upward and outward, barely contained by the various unions of rectilinear and curving brutalist planes that become evident with just a few steps back. Even so, the vigorous local vegetation cannot fully camouflage the hotel’s promise of architecture imagined to incite “a radical sensory experience upon entering.”

Designed by architect Ludwig Godefroy and sited in an inland corner of La Punta Zicatela, Puerto Escondido, the nine suite hotel offers an intimate respite from the festive Oaxacan surf scene weaving across the beachside streets. We found ourselves thankful of the contemplative refuge offered to us for a few morning hours during the recent 2023 Mexico Design Fair, indebted to its shaded cool cavern, enthralled by the contemporary reticulated interpretation of place and space designed to compel guests to do nothing but swim, rest, and occasionally sip something refreshing. Photo: Gregory Han
Photo: Gregory Han
Godefroy’s inside-out approach invites light and shadow, sky and water, mass and emptiness all into an evocative interplay staged across the hotel’s varying heights. The cavernous central enclosure is most dramatically framed by a series of large circular concrete hole punches, allo...