HW Studio’s Casa Tao is an essay in memory, refuge, and attention. Designed for a family whose personal histories and travels shaped its concept, the house embraces shade not only as climate strategy but as atmosphere, an emotional condition as vital as light.
HOUSING
The project’s story begins with Gustavo, who grew up in Puerto Vallarta in a modest home where shade was survival against the coastal heat. His deep intellectual curiosity and affinity for philosophy, photography, and architecture translated into a desire for a space of clarity and stillness. Alongside Cynthia and their daughters, his travels to Japan reinforced this sensibility, inspiring an architecture where silence and emptiness become tangible. HW Studio distilled these memories and desires into a house that feels both personal and universal.
Located in a neighborhood with no grand vistas, the house turns toward a shaded plaza. Rather than using expansive glazing that would amplify heat, the architects framed the view obliquely, letting air, breeze, and fragrance enter indirectly. The program is organized with bedrooms, service spaces, and garage below, while above floats a double-height volume for social life, suspended like a light box. Elevated patios act as terraces of contemplation, platforms that connect daily life with treetops and sea air.
The bedrooms, gathered around a patio, express intimacy through enclosure. A curved entry wall softens the threshold, and a tree planted within greets visitors as a living ornament. The design turns inward without closing off, offering sky and breeze as companions. Life here is orchestrated at a slower rhythm, designed to linger rather than pass through.
Material choices reinforce this quiet poetics. White walls dazzle under the sun, while concrete surfaces absorb and temper the light. Far from cold, this concrete ages with use, holding light rather than reflecting it, embodying a sense of permanence and calm.
Casa Tao ultimately frames dwelling as study and gratitude. Shade, in the Tanizaki sense, becomes more than absence; it is a medium for seeing more subtly. In this house, light and shadow work together to create atmospheres where memory, silence, and presence converge. HW Studio has crafted a refuge where architecture serves not spectacle, but life lived with care.
