CAAM Arquitectos Wraps Puerto Escondido Apartments Around an Open Stair Beneath a Pyramidal Green Roof

Puerto Escondido has spent the last decade absorbing a wave of boutique hospitality, and the results range from thoughtful to generic. SUUEL Living, completed in 2026 by CAAM Arquitectos, belongs to a quieter category. It is a 720 m² apartment building conceived as a residential extension of the existing Hotel Suuel. The idea is to carry the hotel's atmosphere into a place where people actually live, rather than pass through for a long weekend.

What interests us is not the familiar Oaxacan coastal palette of plaster, timber and palms. It is the plan. The building organizes its suites around a central open stair and caps that void with a pyramidal planted roof pierced by a square opening. Circulation becomes the social and climatic center of the building, and the private rooms get on with being calm. For a project this small, that is a confident and legible strategy.

A Round Tower on a Dirt Road

From the street, the building reads as a three-storey plaster block anchored by a cylindrical tower. The curve does real work. It softens the corner, signals the vertical circulation inside, and breaks what could otherwise be a blunt rectangle sitting on an unpaved road among thatched huts.

The details stay restrained: thin steel railings, exposed timber rafters projecting past the roof edge, and planters spilling over the balconies. The rafters give the elevation a fine shadow line at the top, a small move that makes the mass feel lighter than its three floors suggest.

A Planted Roof Among the Palms

The aerial view explains the building better than any elevation. A pyramidal green roof with a square opening at its center sits in a field of palm canopy, and from above it almost dissolves into the vegetation. At eye level the roof edge reads as nearly flat, so the pyramid is something you discover rather than something announced.

The planted surface is a sensible response to a hot coastal site. It should temper heat gain on the top floor, and it gives the building a fifth facade that neighbors and drone cameras will see far more often than anyone expects. The credited plant nursery suggests the landscaping was treated as part of the architecture rather than an afterthought.

The Stair as the Building's Core

Everything converges on the stair. Cantilevered concrete treads rise through the void beside landings fitted with steel railings and timber doors, and the light that reaches them comes from above, through the roof opening. The effect is closer to a courtyard than a stairwell.

We like that CAAM did not dress this space up. Black steel balusters, plain concrete and a single plant tucked under a flight are enough. Placing the core in the middle also frees every suite to face outward toward balconies and trees, which is exactly where you want residents looking in a place like this.

Sunken Rooms at Ground Level

At ground level the architects carve the floor down rather than building up. A sunken nook reached by plaster steps and a lounge with stepped concrete seating create places to sit that feel sheltered without being enclosed. Lowering the seat lowers the eye line, which pulls attention toward planting and dappled light.

These are the kind of in-between spaces that hotels do well and apartment buildings usually skip. Here they are the clearest evidence of the hotel lineage, and the reason the building should feel communal rather than merely shared.

Water, Gravel and the Rear Garden

The rear facade stacks balconies over a small square plunge pool set in gravel, with terracotta coping and stone-edged planting beds. The pool is modest in size and that is the point. It is a place to cool off and sit, not a resort amenity competing with the ocean a short distance away.

Gravel instead of paving keeps the ground permeable and the palette dry and warm. Two wooden loungers are the only furniture, which tells you how much the designers trust the garden to do the work.

Dining in Filtered Light

Inside, the dining areas sit at corners and edges where sheer linen curtains soften low sun. Tables rest on rough-cut stone bases and are paired with woven timber chairs, a combination that grounds the rooms without making them heavy.

Sliding glass doors open the room toward the palms, and the curtains become the real climate controller in daily use. It is a low-tech approach that suits the coast: shade, cross air and fabric before mechanical cooling.

Suites Built for Slowing Down

Living spaces and bedrooms continue the same vocabulary: low sofas, a rounded wooden coffee table, ceramic bowls, woven lamps and low beds under exposed timber beams. The furnishings, largely sourced from Mexican makers, keep the interiors local in feel without tipping into folkloric decoration.

The bedrooms are deliberately plain. With a timber ceiling overhead and curtains moving in the side light, the room needs very little else, and the architects resisted the urge to add it.

Plans and Drawings

The plans confirm the logic. Bedrooms and bathrooms wrap a central stair, with a garden court at one end of the lower level. On the upper floor, six suites ring the void, each with a balcony. Rounded bathroom walls appear throughout, echoing the stair tower and easing movement through otherwise compact rooms.

The roof plan shows four rounded volumes pinwheeling around the square opening under a hipped pyramid. The section ties it together: an open stair rising through three storeys, balconies on the perimeter, sloped roofs overhead and a sunken water tank below, a practical nod to the realities of water supply on this part of the coast.

Why This Project Matters

Coastal Oaxaca is under pressure from short-stay development, and much of what gets built treats the landscape as a backdrop for photographs. SUUEL Living offers a more useful model. It extends a hotel into longer-term housing, keeps the footprint and height modest, and invests its design energy in shared spaces, shade and planting rather than spectacle.

The lesson for designers is in the section. By turning the stair into a lit, planted core and topping it with a green roof, CAAM Arquitectos made circulation the place where the building breathes. It is a compact, repeatable idea, and one we would like to see more often in warm-climate multifamily housing at this scale.

SUUEL Living by CAAM Arquitectos, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico. Area: 720 m². Completed: 2026. Photography: Zaickz Moz.

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