Baja Club entails a 32-room lifestyle hotel for hoteliers Grupo Habita located on a beautiful plot of coastal promenade in the historic centre of La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico. Blending old with new, the project brings together the restoration and adaptive reuse of a pre-existing colonial-style villa dating from 1910 -once a site for oyster pearl harvesting- and the construction of a new four-story extension containing guestrooms, suites, a spa and a rooftop sunset bar.
The new build echoes the L-shaped floor plan of the villa resulting in an ensemble that loosely frames a central courtyard, home to several fragrant frangipani trees, while isolating a series of more tranquil gardens and patios along the perimeter of the site. Throughout the project, the material palette draws on the property’s original detailing, including artisanal terrazzo and Talavera tiles, hand-finished timber latticework and carpentry, and blown glass lamps in transparent and amber tones.
The tiered massing of the extension reduces its visual bulk and provides generous terraces enjoying panoramic views of the Bay of La Paz, once the setting of John Steinbeck’s novel The Pearl.
Bio Max von Werz Arquitectos is a Mexico City based architecture practice founded in 2013 providing services in the fields of architecture and urban design. We work across a variety of scales and sectors with a particular interest in adaptive reuse, housing and projects related to the arts. We pride ourselves on the attention to detail, care and professionalism that we invest in our work. The practice has an international outlook and has built projects in Mexico, Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden.
