Casa El Faro in Los Cabos
A modernist house on a rocky point of the Baja peninsula, built to honour Mexican art and design
El Faro means the lighthouse. The house stands so high on its point above the Sea of Cortez that it lights the headland after dark and is seen for miles out at sea. That is how it took its name.
Sixteen-foot pivoting doors open onto marble mosaic floors drawn from the mid-century villas of Acapulco. The plasterwork walls resemble gigantic cacti and reference the mountain ranges of Baja California Sur, and the woven rope chandeliers were made by ancestral artisans in Cabo.
My client wanted the soul of this site, not a beach house on it. It was important to me to create a true ode to Mexico, its culture and the spirit of Los Cabos, through colour, texture, and art made by some of the country’s finest artisans.
Nature runs through the whole experience and influences the soul of the interiors. A sculptural cactus garden off the primary bedroom screens the meditation terrace, and a Blackman Cruz hanging chair anchors the room.
I wanted to honour the great talents that came out of Mexico in the mid-twentieth century, so I sourced vintage from dealers in Mexico City and layered it through the house. It gives the rooms an unexpected personality and the feeling of a collector’s eye, which you rarely see in a beach house.
Every window vanishes into the walls, and seven thousand square feet of house becomes one indoor and outdoor room. A circular tequila bar, hanging sofas, a firepit, a screen that drops for films after dark, an undulating waterslide, and seats built into the pool for watching whales. Giant agave on the terraces nod to the local pastime of tequila tasting and margarita parties.
One of my favourite decorative moments is the painted walls, overscaled mythic Mexican scenes that run from the ceiling of the firepit terrace to the floating walls of the dining areas. The local artist Daniela Medina painted the terrace ceilings in Benjamin Moore’s Philipsburg Blue.
The powder room is an ode to Frida Kahlo. Its walls are decoupaged in Aztec paintings on parchment I came across by chance at La Ciudadela, a street bazaar in Mexico City. I was enchanted by the first few, so I found the artist and commissioned forty more, until every wall carried these ancient mystical tales.
In one guest room an Oaxacan wool tapestry hangs over a bed dressed in Mexican textiles, and a bold contemporary rug keeps the palette exciting.
“This is the ultimate goal: to create a space that feels at home in its environment, invites all who enter to feel the energy of its owner, and wraps you in the magic of a spectacular location.”
Martyn Lawrence Bullard
The screening room is a cocoon of woven leather beneath vintage Mexican film posters from the 1940s and 50s. Above it all, the top floor belongs to the primary suite, where the glass walls disappear again and the whole floor opens to the ocean and the sunsets.
Martyn wrote about Casa El Faro for Architectural Digest in July 2020.
Photography by Douglas Friedman for Architectural Digest
Star Style
This project appears in Star Style by Martyn Lawrence Bullard, his collection of the interiors he has created for the people who shape modern taste. Signed copies are available here.
