SERVICES | ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
Architectural design that starts with the site, not a style.
We design homes from the ground they stand on — the sun's path, the prevailing breeze, the views, the slope, and the way you actually live. Not a signature look applied to every lot, but a specific response to yours. From the first concept sketch to a complete set of construction documents.
Residential and Site Specific
Designed for the tropical coast
Concept to construction documents
3D before you build
In a region full of beautiful villas, the ones that still feel right in twenty years share one thing: they were designed for their site, not decorated to a trend.
A view-driven plan that ignores the western sun becomes an oven by four in the afternoon. A fashionable material that photographs well can stain and swell in the first humid season. Good design on this coast is not a style you choose from a catalogue — it is a set of decisions about heat, air, light, water and privacy that happen to produce something beautiful.
That is the work we do here: reading a specific piece of the Pacific coast, and shaping a home that belongs to it.
HOW WE READ THE SITE
Six things a lot tells us before we draw a line.
Every design begins as analysis, not aesthetics. Before there is a plan there is an understanding of what the site is doing all day and all year — because that is what a good house answers.
01 - ORIENTATION
Where the sun lands
The western sun is the enemy of comfort on this coast. We map the sun's path across the seasons and orient rooms, overhangs and openings so the house stays cool without leaning on air conditioning.
04- TOPOGRAPHY
How the land falls
A slope is an opportunity, not a problem. Stepping the section with the grade saves retaining cost, protects privacy and gives every level its own relationship to the ground.
02 - AIR
Where the breeze comes from
The prevailing sea breeze is free cooling if the plan lets it through. We design for cross-ventilation and the stack effect so air moves on its own, and the social spaces breathe.
05 - PRIVACY
Who can see in
Neighbors, the street, the unit above. We design the thresholds and screens so that the house feels open to the landscape and closed off from everything else.
03 - VIEWS
What's worth framing
Not every view deserves a wall of glass, and the best one is rarely straight ahead. We compose openings to capture what matters and screen what doesn't.
06 - THE THRESHOLD
Inside meeting outside
On this coast, the best rooms are half outdoors. We design the transition — the terrace, the overhang, the disappearing wall — as carefully as any interior.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
How we think about a house.
01
The section before the plan
In a hot, humid climate, heat and air move vertically. We design the cross-section first — ceiling heights, clerestories, the path air takes to escape — because that is what decides whether a house is comfortable, long before the floor plan does.
02
Orientation is the first material
Before concrete, before stone, the cheapest and most powerful material is which way the house faces. Get the orientation right and everything else — energy cost, comfort, the feel of a room at 5pm — follows.
03
Honest materials that earn a patina
We favor materials that age into something better: concrete, local stone, tropical hardwoods, lime finishes. They cost less to maintain in salt air, and they look intentional in year ten, not dated. We design for patina, not for the photo shoot.
04
Designed around how you actually live
A house for a couple who cook and read is not a house for a family that hosts twenty. We start every project with how you spend a day, who visits, and what the house has to do when you're not there — and let that shape the plan, not the other way around.
THE DESIGN STAGES
From a brief to a buildable set of drawings.
This is the design work specifically — the path from understanding how you live to a complete construction set an engineer and a builder can price and build. Each stage ends in something you can hold and approve.
01
Brief & site analysis
We learn how you live and what the house has to do, then analyse the site — orientation, breeze, views, slope, services and regulations. The design starts as a set of constraints and intentions, not a shape.
YOU RECEIVE
A design brief and site analysis: the parameters every later decision answers to.
02
Concept & massing
The first spatial idea: how the volumes sit on the land, where the house opens and closes, the section that makes it breathe. We test it in quick 3D so you can see the idea, not just read a plan
YOU RECEIVE
Concept plans, massing and volumetric 3D studies, and the design rationale behind them.
03
Schematic & design development
We resolve the plan, sections and elevations in detail, refine over two rounds of your feedback, and develop the material and finish language. This is where the house becomes specific.
YOU RECEIVE
Developed plans, sections, elevations, refined 3D and a material & finish board. Two revision rounds included.
04
Designed around how you actually live
A house for a couple who cook and read is not a house for a family that hosts twenty. We start every project with how you spend a day, who visits, and what the house has to do when you're not there — and let that shape the plan, not the other way around.
YOU RECEIVE
A full construction set (proyecto ejecutivo) with engineering coordinated, ready to permit and build.
ABOUT THE DESIGN WORK
Straight answers.
Do you design in a particular style?
No — and that's deliberate. We work in a contemporary tropical language, but the house comes from your site and your life, not from a signature look we repeat. Two Bernal houses on two different lots should not look like siblings; they should each look inevitable for where they are.
Can you help before I've bought the land?
Yes, and it's one of the best times to involve us. A feasibility and site study tells you what a lot can legally and comfortably hold before you commit — many people discover the plot won't hold the house they pictured. Bringing us in early can change which lot you buy.
Will I see it in 3D before anything is built?
Yes. We test the concept in quick 3D from the massing stage and develop it into fuller visualisations as the design resolves, so you approve the house as an experience, not by trying to read a floor plan.
How many rounds of revision are included?
Two rounds of consolidated feedback through the schematic and design-development stage are included in the design fee. Larger changes of direction after that are handled transparently, quoted before we proceed so nothing is a surprise.
Do you only design, or do you build too?
Both. You can hire us for design alone and take the drawings to your own contractor, or have us design and build under one contract, which is how we prefer to work because what we draw is then exactly what gets built. See design-build →
What exactly do I own at the end of the design phase?
A complete, buildable set: dimensioned plans, sections and elevations, 3D visuals, a material and finish board, and coordinated construction documents ready to permit and build. It's yours — usable with us or with another builder.
YOUR DREAM HOME STARTS HERE
Tell us about the site and how you want to live.
Bring the lot — a title, a location, or a few photos — and a sense of the life you want inside it. We'll tell you what we see in the site, what it could become, and whether we're the right studio to design it.