LAKUN TIKU

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Lakun Tiku is the winning proposal for the conceptual design of a hotel in Mahahual, on the Caribbean coast of Quintana Roo, Mexico. Situated on a 4,000 m² site, the project responds critically to a development framework that permitted a high density of rooms and construction of up to four levels. Rather than consolidating this allowance into a single massive structure, the proposal decomposes the permitted volume into a dispersed architectural landscape, reducing its visual impact while preserving the ecological and spatial integrity of the site.

The hotel is conceived as a dual system of inhabitation. The Cangrejos (crabs) occupy an artificial dune that forms the base of the project—rooms embedded within the terrain, protected by its mass and thermal inertia. Above them, the Pájaros (birds) rest lightly on pilotis: wooden and palapa structures elevated above a free ground plane, allowing air, vegetation, and public life to flow uninterrupted beneath. This open first level becomes the social and circulatory heart of the hotel.

The building is organized in a U-shaped configuration, orienting every room toward 45-degree views of the Caribbean Sea while establishing a protective edge along the site perimeter. At its center, the project evokes the cenotes of the Yucatán Peninsula—a sunken body of water that serves as the hotel’s main pool and communal core.

Lakun Tiku proposes an architecture of balance: between density and openness, mass and lightness, earth and air—an inhabitable terrain shaped in continuity with the Caribbean landscape.

[Project Type]
[Finalization]
[Architects]
[Location]
[Site Surface]
[Building Surface]
[Structure] Hospitality concept
2024
Piero Demichelis,
Mahahual, Qna Roo, Mexico
4,000 sqm
2,800 sqm
Local stone, concrete & wood