Excerpt: Casa TO by Ludwig Godefroy is an architecture project featuring a central swimming pool, which brings quietness and a relaxing mystic aquatic ambience inspired by the hammam. The swimming pool creates a unique blend of prehispanic temple and brutalist Soviet seaside resort, articulating the public area, private suites, and stepped solarium, allowing light to vibrate and refract on top of the water.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] Casa TO is a nine suites hotel located in la Punta Zicatela – Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca. At the end of a dead end road, up the hill, only five minutes away from the beach, the hotel is facing an ecological reserve right across the street. Casa TO is perfectly located in la punta Zicatela, really close to the busy restaurant area, but far enough to enjoy silence and the nature of the ecological reserve in front.
The idea behind the project is to take advantage of this location, to invite the guests to fully disconnect and forget about the surroundings when they come back from the beach.
Casa TO is based on the idea to create a very introverted moment once people get in the hotel. A singular atmosphere is welcoming the guests to rest around the central swimming pool, which brings quietness and a relaxing mystic aquatic ambience inspired by the hammam.
All the project is organized around this swimming pool, catching people’s eyes at the very first moment they penetrate. The swimming pool articulates all the different spaces together, in front the public area, in the back the private area of the suites and above the stepped solarium. This solarium gives a special feeling of prehispanic temple mixed with a brutalist soviet seaside resort to the hotel.
The swimming pool also defines inside and outside, articulating the street together with the inner space through the circles, the ground and the sky through the solarium, letting the light get it to vibrate and refract on top of the water.
The central perspective is playing with a « mise en abyme » of the circles, one appearing inside of another, giving a stronger depth to the space. This perspective is getting reconfigured permanently, interacting when people are walking the space. According to the angle, if people are facing the circles or looking at the circles with a 45 degree rotation, the perception is dramatically changing in a second ; Same experience as the Basilica cistern of Istanbul and its wet atmosphere.
This wet atmosphere on the inside of the hotel brings a little pinch of surrealism too. Casa TO is an experience inspired by the mystic and the sacred, an experience where architecture makes one enjoy simple but elemental pleasures; where architecture makes one enjoy the light, the sky, the breeze, the heat of the sun and nature. Casa TO invites its guests to trip inside of their trip to Mexico, a trip of contemplation.
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