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"View Slideshow\n\nThe Mexican architect Diego Villase\u00F1or is something of a magician. Certainly he has a conjurer's intuitiveness, which, when combined with experience, vision and modesty, helps him to create special houses. \"Far too often we think of ourselves as all-powerful human beings,\" he says, \"and we forget to engage\u2014and play\u2014with our natural settings. My architecture is emotional. I work laterally. I am not afraid of liabilities; I turn them into assets.\"\n\nWhere another architect might have been daunted by the lot Villase\u00F1or's client bought north of Puerto Vallarta, on Mexico's serene Banderas Bay, Villase\u00F1or saw an opportunity to be imaginative instead. His client, a Dallas-based CEO, had previously vacationed in Hawaii, but he happened to visit Punta Mita's Four Seasons Resort, itself a Villase\u00F1or design (see Architectural Digest, July 2000). \"I'd had no real history of going to Mexico, but the beaches were so pristine, and the place was so close to Dallas and in the same time zone,\" he explains, \"that I decided one day to wander into the local real estate office.\"\n\nVillase\u00F1or made sure that his clients could have their meals in half a dozen different locations, following or fleeing the sunlight as they preferred.\n\nTwenty or so parcels of beachfront property had been developed near the hotel, but one of the few that were still available had a very idiosyncratic terrain, in that it sloped from a rise of 30 feet at the westernmost edge to close to sea level at the easternmost. \"Diego was the last of three architects I interviewed,\" the client recalls. \"Within half an hour I knew he was the right person. He had studied where the prevailing winds were from, where the sun rose and set, what the flora and fauna were. He was full of original ideas.\"\n\n\"We spoke about the difficulty of the setting,\" says Villase\u00F1or. \"We spoke about the relationship of architecture to nature. Basically what I proposed was finding a way to touch all aspects of the place\u2014the roundness of the bay, the distant islands and mountains, the landscape, the sky. Not every house by the sea has to assault you with its views. This was to be a house that one could live in in different states of mind.\"\n\nFor Casa Papelillos, Villase\u00F1or designed a structure whose shape was gently inspired by the many butterflies he observed fluttering across the land. He conceived separate pods\u2014or wings\u2014for the family (his bachelor client married and had a child soon after the project began) and their guests, so that the house could function both privately and publicly. In the center he envisioned a courtyard, which serves as a locus of distribution for the house and features a shallow reflecting pool that can be drained to host large parties. And he devised public rooms that were rounded like the bay and had traditional roofs made of palapa; open to the elements, they provide an opportunity to live indoors and outdoors at the same time.\n\nAt every turn Villase\u00F1or fought the limits of the lot. \"I wanted the house to feel isolated,\" he says. \"But not alone, because you are not alone when you are in nature.\" Via the careful placement of windows and other openings, he borrowed as much of the surrounding landscape as he could, giving the illusion of endless vistas. (\"Where I want things to end,\" he declares, \"I put a wall.\") He introduced the view of the sea only gradually and made the physical approach to it, through a series of terraces and paths, part of the ever-varied experience of Casa Papelillos.\n\nIndeed, it is the changeability of the house, or, more accurately, one's changing impression or experience of it, that gives it such a special, vivid serenity. Villase\u00F1or made sure that his clients could have their meals in half a dozen different locations, following or fleeing the sunlight as they preferred. They can embrace the beach or seek shaded refuge from it in quiet courtyards and vest-pocket gardens. They can spend time in open communal rooms or retreat to intimate cloistered bedrooms.\n\nFor all its ambitions, the house is practically and sturdily constructed. Villase\u00F1or saw to it that the building itself would be durable and easy to maintain. He specified perpetually cool honed marble for the floors. The walls are composed of steel-reinforced tinted cement. The large overhanging palapa roofs cool and shade the public rooms \"like a big sombrero,\" whose shape they deliberately evoke.\n\nAs for the furniture and appointments, Villase\u00F1or made intelligently scaled and appropriate gestures. He designed long built-in sofas; a massive low table that cleverly splits in two, in order to provide access to the sofa; a wrought iron chandelier that burns candles and rises and lowers on a crank because \"always at the coast in Mexico we want to keep things simple.\"\n\nFor Villase\u00F1or, that means Oaxacan pottery, a driftwood \"sculpture\" carried in from the beach, as if it were an offering from the sea. It means Mexican textiles, floors studded with river stones, vases of fresh flowers and softening dried grasses. But more important than any single object or room or view, it means understanding what Villase\u00F1or calls the art of living: \"Because being at the seashore, in my country, is ultimately about simplicity itself.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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