Oaxaca: City and Coast
Two houses from the same group, seven hours apart — one behind a historic façade opposite Santo Domingo, one of brick and solar power on the Pacific.
Grupo Habita has been building hotels in Mexico since the nineties that take architecture more seriously than room counts. Two of them stand in Oaxaca, and they could hardly be more different — city and coast, brick and concrete, roof and sea.
Together they make a journey done in two stages: first the city, then over the Sierra to the water.
Otro Oaxaca: behind the façade
Calle Macedonio Alcalá is Oaxaca's pedestrian street, and at its end stands Santo Domingo, the church whose golden interior sets the city's scale. Opposite, behind a colonial façade, RootStudio under João Boto Caeiro has inserted a new building that pretends nothing: brick, concrete, reclaimed wood, courtyards, a plan that refers to the Zapotec site at Mitla.
Sixteen rooms furnished by artisans from the region. On the roof a ten-metre pool and a bar looking at the church. In the basement a spa with a plunge pool. Otro Oaxaca is a house that takes the city not as backdrop but as material.
Terrestre: solar power on the Pacific
Seven hours south, on the coast road near Puerto Escondido, Alberto Kalach has set fourteen villas into the landscape that look like an excavation: brick, concrete, wood, stairs, terraces, each villa with its own pool and outdoor bathroom. No air conditioning. The whole operation runs on solar power.
Next door is Casa Wabi, Bosco Sodi's art foundation with its Tadao Ando building, and you notice that a coastline has become a gallery here — not for tourists but for people who see architecture as a reason to travel. Terrestre has an open-air restaurant, a seven-chamber hammam and a bathing pool. And the heat, which it doesn't fight but accepts.
Practical
Fly to Oaxaca city; three nights at Otro Oaxaca. Then fly or drive (seven hours, winding) to Puerto Escondido; four nights at Terrestre. Best time: November to March. In May and June the coast is hot; in summer it rains.
