In Puerto Vallarta, on Mexico’s Pacific coast, Casa Tao by HW Studio is conceived around shade as both a climatic necessity and a spatial condition. The 472 m² residence draws on the memories and interests of its inhabitants, translating ideas of shelter, quiet and contemplation into a sequence of enclosed courtyards, filtered views and protected interiors.

The house occupies a neighbourhood without distant views, but directly faces a tree-lined plaza offering shade and breeze. Rather than opening frontally towards it through extensive glazing, the architecture establishes an indirect relationship with its surroundings. Carefully positioned openings allow the presence of the plaza to be perceived while limiting exposure to the intense coastal sun.

Shade as a way of inhabiting

The design emerged in part from the inhabitants’ personal histories. Growing up in Puerto Vallarta, one of the owners understood shade as an essential refuge from the heat and humidity of the Pacific climate. A later family journey to Japan introduced another set of references: spatial restraint, emptiness, carefully filtered light and a sense of stillness.

These influences are translated into an architecture of indirect relationships. The house neither withdraws completely from the city nor exposes itself fully to it. Instead, views, breezes and daylight enter through controlled openings, courtyards and transitional spaces.

The result is an environment shaped less by outward display than by the gradual experience of light and shadow.

 

 

Private spaces below, social life above

The principal programme is divided vertically. Bedrooms, the garage and service areas occupy the base of the house, while a lighter, double-height volume containing the main social spaces is raised above them.

Elevating the communal areas separates daily social life from street level and opens it towards the crowns of the surrounding trees. Air circulates around the upper volume, while elevated patios form protected outdoor rooms overlooking the neighbouring greenery.

The arrangement allows the house to engage with the plaza without relying on a conventional panoramic façade. The relationship is experienced through fragments: the movement of branches, the arrival of the breeze and the changing quality of light.

Courtyards and interior retreat

The bedrooms are organized around a courtyard, where enclosure provides privacy while preserving access to air and sky. At the entrance, a curved wall gently redirects movement, while a tree marks the transition into the house.

This inward orientation creates a sequence of spaces focused on the sky, shade and vegetation. The courtyards are therefore more than sources of natural light and ventilation; they establish the slower rhythm around which domestic life is organized.

Throughout the house, privacy is achieved through depth and indirect views rather than complete isolation.

 

 

Concrete, whiteness and filtered light

The material palette reinforces the contrast between the intensity of the exterior climate and the subdued atmosphere within. White surfaces respond sharply to the coastal sun, while exposed concrete absorbs and softens light.

Its weight gives the interiors a sense of permanence, but the changing daylight prevents the material from appearing static. Light settles across walls and surfaces, revealing subtle differences between open courtyards, shaded thresholds and more protected rooms.

The architects relate this approach to Junichirō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows, where darkness is understood as a means of giving depth to perception rather than simply as the absence of light. In Casa Tao, shade becomes similarly active: a climatic resource, a spatial filter and the element through which the house establishes its atmosphere.

Casa Tao ultimately proposes a form of domestic life organized around attention and pause. Through its elevated patios, inward-facing courtyards and carefully controlled openings, the house creates a protected interior world while remaining connected to the air, vegetation and climate of Puerto Vallarta.

A Courtyard House Shaped by Urban Constraints

In Baghdad, Shatt Al-Arab House by Fran Silvestre Arquitectos is conceived from the limitations of its site. Located at street level on one of the city’s busiest avenues, the plot is defined by the geometry of the surrounding urban fabric and by the need to create privacy, openness and domestic calm within a dense metropolitan condition.

The brief called for a residence that would bring together a daytime living area, two nighttime rooms and a space for physical exercise. Given the limited size of the plot, the most immediate strategy would have been to build vertically, freeing part of the site for a garden. Instead, the architects chose to occupy the entire plot with an extensive single-storey volume.

A Horizontal Strategy for a Compact Plot

The decision to work horizontally allows the house to establish a different relationship with the exterior. Rather than concentrating the program in a compact vertical form, the project expands across the site and connects with outdoor space in two distinct ways.

The first is a perimeter garden, which acts as a filter between the house, the avenue and the surrounding streets. The second is a central circular courtyard, which becomes the main open space of the residence and the organizing element of the entire plan.

The Circular Courtyard as the Center of the House

The central courtyard gathers the more public and open areas of the house around it. In one direction, it creates a sequence of indoor and outdoor spaces that begins and ends in the perimeter garden, allowing the interior to extend visually and physically across the full depth of the plot.

This spatial sequence is defined by four glass boundaries that can be fully retracted along the side walls. When opened, they create a hybrid condition between interior and exterior, transforming the house into a continuous open space that stretches from one end of the plot to the other.

Perimeter Garden, Privacy and Retractable Boundaries

The perimeter garden plays a dual role. It protects the house from the intensity of the surrounding urban context, while also allowing each space to remain connected to greenery and natural light. As a boundary, it is not a hard separation, but a planted threshold that mediates between domestic life and the city.

The retractable glass enclosures reinforce this sense of permeability. They allow the living areas to change character according to use, climate and time of day, expanding the domestic interior into the garden and courtyard whenever needed.

Night Rooms, Service Cores and Spatial Clarity

In the opposite direction from the main open sequence, the two primary nighttime rooms are positioned with a more controlled relationship to the exterior. These rooms open only toward the perimeter, ensuring privacy while maintaining contact with the garden.

At the four corners of the house, enclosed cores concentrate the service areas. This clear distribution frees the central and perimeter spaces, giving the plan a precise organization in which open, private and service zones are carefully balanced.

A Rooftop Oasis Above the City

The roof completes the spatial composition of the house. Accessed by an internal staircase, it is conceived as an elevated oasis defined by a series of boundaries. On the outer edge, the vegetation of the garden provides privacy from the city.

On the inner edge, a sheet of water crowns the circular courtyard below. One side of this water element becomes deeper, allowing it to be used for bathing. The roof therefore extends the logic of the house vertically, creating a final outdoor space where vegetation, water and enclosure form a protected domestic landscape above the street.