3-Story Beach House Balances Private Retreat & Public View
While a hotel, inn or condo rental along a public beach makes for a nice vacation in Florida or Panama City, ownership of a home means dealing with passers by on a daily basis. This three-tiered solution manages to feel private and secluded while strongly engaging the wonderful watery horizon.
Designed by Javier Artadi for a waterfront site in Lima, Peru, each floor is architecturally uniquely addressed to the property conditions, but works together to form a compelling residence that works on all levels.
The first is enclosed in stone, seeming to rise up out of the surrounding sand and rock. This contains service functions such as the garage and guest rooms – a solid fortress-like volume above which the remaining elements feel light and lofted.
The second houses master bedrooms and bathrooms, while the third serves as community space, containing kitchen, living and dining rooms as well as a lovely outdoor terrace leading to an exterior swimming pool thrust out toward the water beyond.
The plans are useful, but the section drawing speaks volumes to the strategies employed – a thick and divided ground level leads up and around, letting one back out on the top floor to experience a more private slice of the surrounding outdoors.
“The project is located at 125 km south of Lima city in a beach named “Las Palmeras”.The house is organized into three levels: the first level contains all service areas, garage and guest rooms; the second level comprises the house principal rooms; and the third one is intended to be the social areas: kitchen, living-room, dining-room, terrace and swimming pool.”
“The underlying conceptual proposal seeks to reduce to the minimum the architectonic shapes and forms so as to concentrate all the sight-seeing force on the upper volume, principal figure which seems to be wishing to float over the other levels of the house.”
“Functionally, the main volume is surrounded by sleeping and service areas. There the kitchen and master bedroom can be found, which are both visually connected with the terrace and pool, and through them, with the skyline.”
