Architecture Wednesday: Tiny Holiday House

I do like to go big … in houses, I mean … but every once in a while—like with last week’s Poet’s Hideaway—small is better; and this is small.

In a serene and tranquil rural area of Mexico, is this small holiday home, designed to blend into its surroundings and provide its dwellers with as authentic and relaxing a natural experience as possible.

Intended to be a home away from home that feels completely disconnected from the hustle and bustle of city life, the Aculco project was specifically designed to take full advantage of the scientifically proven calming effects of natural environments.

Originally an abandoned old stone house that stood on land with absentee owners, two brothers stumbled upon it by accident and fell completely in love with, not the house so much, but the area. They purchased the plot and home and hired an architect to transform it into a holiday home.

But first the brothers tended to the land around the building for a number of years until they felt it was rehabilitated and ready for respectful change; they reforested the area and replenished the natural setting to its peak lusciousness.

Then they started on the house … they opted to interfere with its natural beauty and history as little as possible, though it was updated to withstand the elements that had weathered it in the first place.

Locally sourced quarry blocks were used to cover the floors, while wood framing and new windows were also added. But the materiality that was already there has been largely preserved in the state it was already in, so long as that state was good and solid.

Now the home presents a stunning space that opens out entirely into its natural surroundings thanks to wooden shutters and sliding glass doors in each wall. The house is linear in shape with a bedroom that leads around a separating wall into a main living space and finally into a fully equipped kitchen.

The spaces in the home’s interiors are wide open and have simple, easy flow throughout, with simple markers that define the rooms by their function without actually blocking them from one another in any way. This helps with air and sunlight flow as much as movement, letting the natural light from the wide-open doors and the big, new windows reach every corner.

It’s small, but when you take in the views it might just be the biggest house around.

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