GRAPHĒ

Lounging Is Mandatory at This Curving Concrete Beach House in Baja

A conversation pit, a wading pool, several rooftops, and standalone bedrooms with a view: this Todos Santos retreat is built for relaxmaxxing by the Pacific.

Houses We Love: Every day we feature a remarkable space submitted by our community of architects, designers, builders, and homeowners. Have one to share? Post it here.

Project Details:

Location: Todos Santos, Mexico

Architect: Studiofont

Footprint: 6,450 square feet

Structural Engineer: Fernando Calleja

Mechanical Engineer: FREMER

Lighting Design: KOVA

Photographer: Alberstudio

From the Architect: "Nereidas Design House is an architectural project located in the desert landscape of Baja California. Situated near Todos Santos, the project occupies a 6,458-square-foot plot characterized by cacti and uninterrupted views toward the Sierra de la Laguna Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. The project is conceived as a house broken into architectural pieces, a fragmentation that allows each inhabited unit to secure privacy while establishing a specific and deliberate visual relationship with the surrounding landscape. This strategy distributes domestic life across the site, avoiding a single enclosing volume.

"The house is articulated through a set of private rooms and a shared structure, arranged to balance containment and openness across the site. Individual spaces are oriented toward precisely framed views, while the collective areas extend longitudinally, engaging the full breadth of the landscape and accommodating shared use. There are three private units across the landscape, conceived as a single continuous interior in which sleeping, resting, and bathing coexist without subdivision. Curved interior walls open onto three distinct windows, each framing a different portion of the landscape and generating specific atmospheres within the same room. Beds, seating, storage, and bathrooms are integrated into the architectural envelope, allowing each activity to relate to its own visual field while remaining part of a unified spatial volume. Access to the roof extends inhabitation vertically, reinforcing a direct connection between private space, sky, and horizon.

"The shared structure forms the primary collective space of the project. Its configuration is defined by two crossing roofs that unfold a double-height firepit and a cascading cylindrical pool, and creating distinct settings for gathering, dining, and rest. Fully open along its length, the structure establishes continuous visual and spatial alignment with the desert. Overlapping planes generate deep shade, while changes in height guide movement through space without the use of conventional partitions.

"The architecture is built entirely in pigmented concrete, used simultaneously as structure and finish. The pink tone gives warmth to the material, allowing the building to register variations in light throughout the day and intensifying the contrast with the surrounding vegetation, particularly after rainfall, when the landscape becomes visibly greener.

"Environmental systems are integrated into the project’s design. The house operates fully off-grid: electricity is generated through photovoltaic solar panels, and a thermosolar system provides hot water. Water reuse strategies reduce demand on local resources, and all vegetation displaced during construction was replanted on site, maintaining continuity of the existing desert ecosystem."

See the full story on Dwell.com: Lounging Is Mandatory at This Curving Concrete Beach House in Baja
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Budget Breakdown: This $167K Chilean Prefab Isn’t Your Typical Surf Shack

"Quality was controlled to the maximum," says architect Nataša Stanaćev. "The result is a home with finishes that are—I would say—almost luxurious, yet achieved without the use of luxury materials."

Welcome to Beach Week, our annual celebration of the best place on Earth.

This compact coastal cabin in Matanzas, a village on Chile’s craggy central coast, is not your typical prefab. It was designed by Stanaćev Granados, an architecture duo known for their highly expressive minimalist residences, and it was built at a nearby workshop by an independent contractor and his three trusted workers. In other words, the endeavor was unusually bespoke. But it did achieve the client’s goal of reducing the cost and time of traditional construction.

"This was a fun project because it was an attempt at prefabrication, which is a very industrial process, but it became something very boutique," says architect Nataša Stanaćev, who helms Stanaćev Granados with Manuel Granados, her partner and husband.

This 376-square-foot cabin in Matanzas, a rugged coastal area of Chile popular among kite surfers, was designed by local studio Stanaćev Granados.
Photo: Manuel Granados

The story began with a forested 1-acre plot on a hill with distant views of the Pacific. Raúl Castellazzi, an Argentine tech professional based in Santiago, had bought it for $67,000 about a decade earlier. "I fell in love with the place," he says of Matanzas. "I thought it was magical to have the sea, hills, and forests, all together." As a single guy and avid kitesurfer, he imagined building a basic crash pad for weekend trips from the city.

He initially considered a prebuilt tiny house, but his neighbor, an engineer and contractor named Florent Dromard, proposed a more custom option: fabricating timber panels at his workshop and assembling them on-site. Florent’s friends at Stanaćev Granados could design the structure. "I knew how innovative they were, and since Florent enjoyed working with them, it seemed like the perfect trifecta," says Raúl.

The homeowner, Raúl Castellazzi, is a young tech professional who wanted a simple place to crash during his frequent trips from Santiago to the sea.
Photo: Manuel Granados

Knowing that the goal was to build something very small and affordable, the architects drew a 370-square-foot lofted cabin made almost entirely of plywood panels. The panels were cut to specification at Dromard’s workshop, a modest space that barely accommodated the larger pieces. Once on-site, they were glued to the timber framing—there are no visible screws or nails—to create a seamless look.

The interior of the cabin, with its 19-foot-tall pitched ceiling, is covered in plywood panels that were glued to the structure’s wood frame—no nails or screws—to achieve a clean, seamless look.
Photo: Manuel Granados

See the full story on Dwell.com: Budget Breakdown: This $167K Chilean Prefab Isn’t Your Typical Surf Shack
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In British Columbia, an Off-Grid Island Cabin Just Surfaced for $2M

Designed by BattersbyHowat Architects, the boat-accessible residence is perched on a rocky site with views of Horseshoe Bay.

Designed by BattersbyHowat Architects, this boat-accessible residence is perched on a rocky site with views of Horseshoe Bay.

Location: 671 Bowen View Road, Gambier Island, British Columbia, Canada

Price: $2,850,000 CAD (approximately $2,016,375 USD)

Year Built: 2005

Architect: BattersbyHowat Architects

Footprint: 2,009 Square Feet (3 Bedrooms, 2 Baths)

Lot Size: 0.49 Acres

From the Agent: "Here’s a rare architectural home on Gambier Island. Just 20 minutes from Horseshoe Bay, arrive at your private dock and leave everything else behind. Designed by BattersbyHowat and constructed by custom builder Hart Tipton Construction, this one-of-a-kind home masterfully tames the rugged landscape with bold architecture and seamless indoor/outdoor flow. A stunning three-bed layout wraps around a sun-filled courtyard, flooding the home with natural light all day. Warm, refined interiors feature Douglas fir floors and millwork, hemlock ceiling panels, and sleek aluminum curtain wall windows. The home feels sheltered and quiet, while still maintaining a strong connection to the water and rugged landscape. The design for privacy includes many thoughtfully placed windows that give tailored natural light and focused tree views, and the south-facing exposure delivers unreal sunrises and glowing sunset skies."

BattersbyHowat designed the cabin to sit gently amidst the existing landscape.
Photo by Alena Machinskaia at InFrame

See the full story on Dwell.com: In British Columbia, an Off-Grid Island Cabin Just Surfaced for $2M
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In Colorado, $1.8M Will Get You a Tiny House on a Massive 35-Acre Lot

Located in Durango, the property includes a 625-square-foot cabin by Atkinson Architecture—and ample acreage for a larger home.

Location: 2326 Celadon Drive East, Durango, Colorado

Price: $1,800,000

Year Built: 2006

Architect: Stephen Atkinson

Footprint: 625 Square Feet (1 Bed, 1 Bath)

Lot Size: 35 Acres

From the Agent: "This 35-acre property, set within the gated Celadon community, borders national forest land, providing privacy and direct access to outdoor recreation. The Celadon neighborhood is located in Southwest Colorado between the historic town of Durango and the Purgatory Ski Resort. From this elevated homesite, enjoy spectacular views across the Animas Valley to dramatic rock cliffs and sweeping mountain peaks beyond. Locally sourced aspen paneling, earthen plastered walls, an antique claw-foot bathtub, and woodstove create a warm, woodsy compliment to the contemporary design. The super energy-efficient building envelope features Icynene open-cell foam insulation. The exterior is constructed with durable, low-maintenance cement stucco. Utilities, including electric, natural gas, and a communication conduit, are installed at the cabin and ready for extension to a future custom home. A fully permitted and inspected septic system is in place, designed for both the existing cabin and a future three-bedroom residence."

The forested property has ample available land to build a larger home and adapt the cabin as a guest house. — The forested property has ample space to build a larger home and adapt the cabin as a guesthouse.
Photo courtesy of Keller Williams Realty Southwest Associates

Photo courtesy of Keller Williams Realty Southwest Associates

The windows and doors have hinged steel shutters, securing the cabin when the future owners are elsewhere. — The cabin’s windows and doors have hinged steel shutters.
Photo courtesy of Keller Williams Realty Southwest Associates

See the full story on Dwell.com: In Colorado, $1.8M Will Get You a Tiny House on a Massive 35-Acre Lot
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They Put a Mini House Inside This Sixth-Floor Apartment in Japan

A structure resembling the client’s childhood home holds a living area and bedroom, recreating the idea of an engawa around it.

Houses We Love: Every day we feature a remarkable space submitted by our community of architects, designers, builders, and homeowners. Have one to share? Post it here.

Project Details:

Location: Fukuoka prefecture, Japan

Architect: Kuma & Elsa / @kumaelsa

Footprint: 2,706 square feet

Builder: Azuma Kensetu

Structural Engineer: Kenichi Inoue Structural Engineers

Photographer: Shohei Kuma

From the Architect: "The client’s childhood home, a traditional Japanese house, has an engawa—a gallery open to the garden. There, she was immersed in the scent of fresh grass, the fragrances of the seasons, and even the smells drifting from his neighbors’ kitchens. The wish was to recreate that memory, this time in an apartment nearly 50 feet above the ground. We imagined a house open to the sky. The new residence occupies the top two floors of a building owned by the client. She, along with her two sons and their families, will move into three apartments located on the sixth and seventh floors. We were commissioned to design the client’s apartment on the sixth floor and one of his sons’ on the seventh. In this reinforced-concrete frame building, lined with balconies to the north and south, these two levels benefit from a generous ceiling height. They give the impression of new plots of land suspended in the urban sky.

"At the center of each apartment, we inserted a hut-like volume that gathers the quieter rooms: a small living room and the bedrooms. In the space carved out around it emerges an intermediate zone, an engawa that serves both as a place to stay and as a passage. Balcony, engawa, and hut thus form three spatial layers that resonate with the childhood home. To encourage natural ventilation and seasonal thermal comfort, the hut is punctuated with high-level openings. But where do the rooms begin, and where does the passage end? As if to embody this ambiguity of boundaries, the wooden floor extends beyond the hut and interlocks in a sawtooth pattern with the engawa’s tiles. Materials blend together, as do uses of the space.

"Although recently completed, the apartments deliberately retain a sense of incompletion. The white-painted surfaces, which suggest a finished state, are limited to the areas where thermal insulation has been reinforced. Inside the huts, large expanses of exposed gypsum board walls are left open to the inhabitants’ appropriation, so that their future choices may take root. The structure consists of Y-shaped modules made of lightweight steel sections and bracing cables, typically used in shelving systems. These modules are arranged two-by-two in mirrored pairs along a regular grid, with occasional inversions. They are fixed to the floor and ceiling slabs of the building’s structural frame and are structurally stable, requiring no additional bracing to withstand earthquakes. From these new dwellings, one can look down across the street at the engawa of the childhood home."

See the full story on Dwell.com: They Put a Mini House Inside This Sixth-Floor Apartment in Japan

From the Archive: In the Suburbs of L.A., a Modern Loft Addition Made a Tract Home Ideal for Artists

Hardly visible from the street, the Central Office of Architecture’s new structure provided a rebuttal to the site’s existing predictable bungalow—without disrupting the flow of the neighborhood.

Welcome to From the Archive, a look back at stories from Dwell’s past. This story previously appeared in the October 2001 issue.

Propped up on the wood-plank fence that divides this property from the neighbor’s, contractor Roman Janczak surveys an amply weedy backyard. For him, this is all potential, a found space on which to build. Before moving, Janczak transformed his own lot (which once looked much like the one next door) from lawnmower nightmare to modernist dream. Perched on the fence between lots with Janczak, I feel like a cross between a peeping Tom and Kilroy as we peer over the boundary and crane to get glimpses of other properties. Orange, lemon, and flowering pomegranate trees flourish in this postwar subdivision. A couple of beasts, which I am told are "nice dogs," bark and scratch at the fence.

This is Encino. The San Fernando Valley. Southern California. Although it is years past the height of midcentury "keeping up with the Joneses," and the development has aged without the facelifts of other, richer suburbs, there is a sense of Arcadia in the valley on a day clear and relatively free from smog.

Our side of the fence is a different type of Eden: a utopia inspired by such modern masters as Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler. Maison Outil (Tool House), which was designed by the Los Angeles firm Central Office of Architecture (COA) and constructed in the backyard, fills up most of the lot, but the openness of the design gives the sense of being outdoors. COA partners Russell Thomsen, Ron Golan, and Eric Kahn picked up on Le Corbusier’s doctrine "a house is a machine for living in," and integrated it with the openness afforded by California living to produce architecture that follows their philosophy of the house as functioning not only as a machine but as a tool.

The space is decadent in its airiness, but restrained in its materiality. The floor is made of polished concrete and the walls are white plaster. Crucial to the early design session was a quote by Janczak: "I want to live in an aircraft hangar." His seemingly simple request carries through into the built form.

But how do you build an aircraft hangar in a postwar subdivision filled with two-bedroom houses crowned with TV antennae? COA’s solution is more discreet than one might expect. The 1,400-square-foot addition is stealthily tucked away behind the existing 860-square-foot bungalow. The result is an industrial, loftlike space hidden in suburbia.

Roman Janczak and Joan Jaeckel lived in the existing house for more than 10 years before commissioning COA to design the addition, which Janczak, a contractor and an unofficial fourth partner of the architecture firm, built.

"Any job we get, we all work on it," says Kahn about the structure of the firm. "Roman negotiates with the clients. He sees the purpose in doing something well for the sake of architecture and for the clients. It’s hard to get [a contractor] to really care, and Roman really does." Of course, when the contractor is the client, things run pretty smoothly. "The house was absolutely for ourselves—very personal. We looked upon it as a piece of art," offers Janczak. In fact, it is hard to get him to put a price on the cost of the addition, since he donated his time and skill, as well as pulling in a few favors amassed in his trade. The result is a home where the details are modest but refined, and well thought-out. He gestures to the specialized lighting in the art studio and the Korean-inspired main bath.

The house transitions from old to new, from the mass production of cookie-cutter tract homes to contemporary customization. A narrow skylight cuts into the existing structure, using light to join the remodeled kitchen to the double-height living area.

Jaeckel, an education advocate for the Whole Education Project, wanted to use the house to host fundraising events. In response to her requests, the main living area embodies both the industrialism of a live/work space and the characteristics of a garden pavilion. In short, it’s a great space for parties.

"The light penetrates to the heart of the house. It feels like being outside. Now that I live in a conventional house, I feel like Alice, ten feet tall, after living in a place like this," illustrates Jaeckel. Floor-to-ceiling steel and glass doors slide away and the division between indoors and out dissolves.

The opened-up room extends from a one-window wall to the fence shared with their neighbor Bob (who, I’m told, has quite a knack with the clippers), where a stand of 3o-foot-high bamboo serves as a green privacy screen. The west and south zones of the addition are opaque. These white-cubed spaces hold the services—the toilets, stairs, and library.

See the full story on Dwell.com: From the Archive: In the Suburbs of L.A., a Modern Loft Addition Made a Tract Home Ideal for Artists
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Here’s One Way to Renovate the Home of a Famous Spanish Pirate

The great-great-grandson of Antoni Cuyàs modified the living area with a stainless-steel built-in that wraps the perimeter, forming a sofa, desk, cabinets, and shelving.

Houses We Love: Every day we feature a remarkable space submitted by our community of architects, designers, builders, and homeowners. Have one to share? Post it here.

Project Details:

Location: Mataró, Spain

Architect: Raul Sanchez Architects / @raulsanchezarchitects

Footprint: 1,076 square feet

Photographer: José Hevia

From the Architect: "In 1820, at just eighteen years old, Antoni Cuyàs, originally from Mataró, Spain, set off for Argentina with little more than basic knowledge of navigation. Not many years later, after a meteoric career, he had become the most feared corsair among Brazilian ships, which, according to chronicles of the time, rarely escaped Antoni’s cannon fire. Having amassed an enormous fortune while still very young, he abandoned life at sea and developed both personal and financial ties with the country’s ruling classes, becoming a frequent advisor to the presidents of the era. After a marriage that produced no descendants, and wishing to spend his final years in his native Mataró, he returned in 1865. There he purchased two houses on the Rambla, joined them together, and commissioned a group of Italian artists working in the area to design him a residence reminiscent of the palaces he had frequented in Argentina. Toward the end of his life, he met an orphaned boy who shared his surname and decided to adopt him, making him his sole heir. Over the years the house endured a turbulent fate, stripped of many of its most valuable elements, although the Cuyàs family retained ownership of it.

"By 2023, Manuel Cuyàs, the pirate’s great-great-grandson, and his wife, Nuria, (Argentinian, as fate would have it), a designer and cultural worker, were tired of living in spaces trapped in a distorted past that did not suit their working routine (both work from home). They decided to renovate three rooms that still retained original elements: the entrance hall, the dining room, and the pirate’s room, the latter listed by the heritage authorities. The requirements were simple: to be able to fully enjoy all the spaces, to use the room both as a living room and a workspace, to keep the dining room exclusively for dining, to give the entrance hall a meaningful role within the ensemble, and to restore some of the badly mistreated grandeur the house once possessed.

"A large plinth made of stainless steel anchors the entire perimeter of the room, accommodating workspaces, the sofa area, and storage, establishing a continuous element throughout the room that unifies the intervention. Above it, the original wallpapers are preserved, family paintings returned to their place, and the polychrome ceiling once again presides over the room, free from installations and cables. Below, the original terra-cotta floor has been recovered and treated to prevent its constant disintegration through a complex process of resin application and consolidation. The more common, non-original tiles along the perimeter were removed to facilitate the passage of all installations, which then rise concealed behind the steel plinth. This perimeter frame is finished with micro-mortar, highly flexible and capable of adapting to the movements of a very old structure. The cracks in ceilings and walls, the imperfections in the wallpaper and the floor, remain as they are to reflect the home’s age, and even the channels carved into the walls to bring electricity to the wall lights are left unfinished and untouched.

"The relationship between the painting of the pirate in his later years, proudly displaying his sword (which is preserved in the entrance hall), and the mirror facing it has been maintained."

"The room is now even climate-controlled, although it would be difficult to guess where the system is hidden. The considerable technical complexity of the intervention ultimately recedes, allowing the room to recover its former splendor—not as a museum piece anchored to an idealized past that most often never existed, but as a space that acknowledges its past and history while carrying them into the present."