Casa Cosmos by S-AR

Designed by S-AR in 2019, Casa Cosmos is a small house placed nearby Puerto Escondido on the Pacific coast of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, with a construction area of 100m² (1,076ft²). You can book Casa Cosmos through Airbnb. Its price starts at $171USD (≈€145) per night.

The house has a strong relation with the landscape through a skin of a mechanical wooden lattice, which also protects the house when not in use and will provide different levels of privacy when inhabited. The outer concrete grid embraces and incorporates the existing vegetation, making the points between architecture and landscape undefined and transformed by the seasons, blooming and uses that the inhabitants will give to the structure.

The constructive system is based on a grid of columns and beams of 20cm x 20cm placed to form interior spaces of 4.10m x 4.80m and exterior ones of 2.60m x 2.60m, 2.60m x 4.10m and 2.60m x 4.80 m.
The result is a house of 78.7m2 interior and 100 m2 total counting the area covered by the exterior structure of the house.

One of the main design ideas of the house is the use of the structure in a reticular form that could respond to its situation within a seismic area. This way it would answer after telluric movements coming from any direction. In the same way, the selection of materials provide rigidity, durability and low maintenance to the house. The use of wood makes the space feel warmth, and adds temporality as it will change over time. Seen this way, the house is a process of transformation related to the site, its vegetation, seasons, constellations, and surrounding nature.

The use of local materials, of low maintenance, durability and the rational understanding in its use is one of the basis of the design. Basically there are two materials to build the house. Concrete (constructive system highly used by Mexican architecture) that provides structural resistance for the seismic zone, high durability, economy and low maintenance. Wood (from the endemic tree macuil) that offers flexibility on the enclosures, human scale, and the relationship of the house with its immediate surroundings, not only through the views but also through temperature, sound and wind.

— S-AR

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