Location: Tulum, Mexico.

Architect: Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos.

Amelia Tulum is a residential and commercial project located in Aldea Zamá, one of the fastest-growing urban areas in the Riviera Maya. The project aims to blend in with the natural environment, respecting the climate, topography, and native vegetation. The construction has the least impact on the terrain, using the minimum footprint when raising the structure above the ground. The complex features a select commercial program that coexists with the residential development, while the upper floors are interwoven in opposite directions to form a checkerboard, creating terraces in the exposed, intermediate open spaces. The 38 apartments have terraces and bedrooms with private entrances, and share the top floor which offers open-air amenities such as a roof bar, hammocks, pool, sunbeds, and grill. The building is designed to reduce solar gain and maximize air flows to keep the building fresh. Various passive systems, such as eaves with vegetation above the windows, protection with natural woven screens and pergolas, provide the principal sustainable feature of the complex. The landscape design affords an outstanding role to the native vegetation, which borders all the building slabs, appropriates the internal corridors and weaves its way throughout the ground floor. The principal structure is reinforced concrete together with post-tensioned slab systems, while the other materials and finishes make use of local artisan techniques, which also serves to incorporate the local economy into the construction process. All the interior surfaces are finished with chukum, a smooth cement finish created with the sap of a native tree; tzalam wood is used for its tolerance of sunlight and humidity; and all the screens are woven by local people using jiles, a type of wood that can be worked like a fiber.