Westin Regina Los Cabos

Los Cabos, Mexico

1994

Aerial dusk view of Westin Regina Los Cabos curved hotel wall integrated into the desert hillside above the Sea of Cortés. By Sordo Madaleno.

Westin Regina los Cabos demonstrates Sordo Madaleno’s fluency in designing in direct dialogue with landscape. Moving as an embracing curved form across the landscape, the hotel unites the extremities of a natural crater in a gesture that bands the land together through one sweeping motion. As it does so, it creates a new environment within its circular plan: a protected oasis nesting inside a wider context of semi-desert landscape, and the crystalline brilliance of the Sea of Cortez.

Aerial view of Westin Regina Los Cabos curved hotel wall embedded in the Baja California desert coastline and mountains. By Sordo Madaleno.

The use of colour is central to the design. The facade unfurls as a horizontal strip of burnt umber; its exact tone lifted from the hues of the sand and soil that cradle its edges. Punctured by large openings at key points along its curvature, the connection between land and sea is both safeguarded and emphasised. The facade’s main opening—which creates a rupture to the height of six floors, spanning 45 metres wide—becomes a giant ‘window to the sea’. Beyond this porous threshold, pools inside the hotel’s perimeter align with sightlines of the horizon.

Archival photograph of Westin Regina Los Cabos showing the window to the sea opening in the curved hotel wall, 1993. Sordo Madaleno.

Westin Regina Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, 1994. Photography by Ignacio Urquiza.

Archival photograph of Westin Regina Los Cabos pool and curved hotel tower framed by vivid red walls overlooking the Sea of Cortés, 1993. Sordo Madaleno.

Westin Regina Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, 1994. Photography by Ignacio Urquiza.

The hotel’s rooms appear in rhythmic sequence along the curve of the building, some looking outwards towards the shallow topography of the beach, others facing inwards onto the new, protected oasis. Here, nestled buildings stay low to the ground and are rendered in a bold magenta colour, delineating from the enveloping outer building. Feathering out from its grand semi-circular volume are smaller residences, coloured in the same umber hues, yet breaking down in scale to form a mottled arrangement across the sand.

The window to the sea — central opening in Westin Regina Los Cabos curved hotel wall framing the Sea of Cortés and oasis garden. By Sordo Madaleno.

Westin Regina Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, 1994. Sordo Madaleno.

Original elevation drawing of Westin Regina Los Cabos showing the curved hotel wall and central window to the sea opening. Sordo Madaleno, 1993.

Original elevation drawing, Westin Regina Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, 1994.

Westin Regina los Cabos champions some of the prominent tenets of Mexican architecture—vibrant saturation, undiluted geometry and purity of form. In each of its design decisions, the building simultaneously declares its presence within the landscape, whilst saluting the beauty that surrounds it.

Red concrete screen façade of Hotel Camino Real, Mexico City. Ricardo Legorreta, 1968. Photography © Mary Ann Sullivan.

The use of colour, pattern, and the play of light and shadow makes reference to the major design drivers of Mexican Modernism. Intense colours signal the arrival to this part of the world–introducing a context of vibrance and contrast.