In Punta Garrobo, a stretch of jungle-covered coastline near Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, HW Studio designed a 5,350-square-foot home around an uncommon approach to luxury residential architecture: rather than adding, the architects chose to subtract. The Morelia-based studio reduced the project to three elements—a floor, a roof, and shade—so as not to compete with a landscape that, as the architects themselves describe it, was already powerful enough before the house arrived.

A Studio Founded on the Idea of Silence

HW Studio was founded in Morelia in 2010 by Rogelio Vallejo Bores, Oscar Didier Ascencio Castro, and other partners. The studio’s name is no coincidence: the H, a silent letter in Spanish, graphically represents silence, while the W refers to the Japanese concept of wabi-cha, a tradition within the tea ceremony that favors simplicity and imperfection over ostentation. This intersection of Eastern thought and Mexican context lies at the heart of much of the studio’s work and helps explain why Casa Malonic is defined by so few elements.

The studio has quickly gained international recognition. It was included in Architectural Record’s 2024 Design Vanguard, named to Architectural Digest Mexico and Latin America’s AD100 2025 list, and received the Best New Firm award at Brazil’s Architecture Hunter Awards in 2025. Vallejo Bores was also nominated for the Illinois Institute of Technology’s 2024 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize for Emerging Architecture.

The Enramada as a Starting Point

The concept behind Casa Malonic is not that of a conventional beach house, but rather the idea of the enramada: an elemental shelter beneath the shade. Instead of literally recreating vernacular architecture, the project returns to its most essential logic.

From the street, the house appears as a closed white mass, protected by a curved concrete wall that follows the shape of the road. Only as you move through it—past vegetation, rocks, and the natural topography that reinforce its protected character toward the street—does the house begin to open up.

The path leads to a circular courtyard, the true center of the home, where walls stop functioning as boundaries and instead become frames: for the sky, the vegetation, and the Pacific horizon. The floor, with a texture and color reminiscent of sand, extends the sensory experience of the beach into the interior, while the white walls echo the blossoms of nine cacalosúchil trees—also known as frangipani or plumeria—that surround the property.

A Team With More Than a Decade of Collaboration

The project was led by Rogelio Vallejo Bores, with Oscar Didier Ascencio Castro and Nik Zaret Cervantes Ordaz as architects, and Juan Pablo Camacho Ayala as part of the team. Structural engineering was handled by ARGA Constructora, while COMAQSO oversaw construction. Completed in June 2026, the residence was photographed by César Béjar, a frequent HW Studio collaborator responsible for much of the visual archive that has accompanied the studio’s growing international recognition.

Why Casa Malonic Is Drawing Attention Beyond Mexico

Casa Malonic joins a series of HW Studio projects—including Casa Shi, Casa Kehai, and Casa Enso II—that share the same recurring idea: build less to experience more.

At a time when much of the luxury residential architecture along Mexico’s coastline competes to maximize views, square footage, and amenities, HW Studio takes the opposite approach. Casa Malonic is defined as much by what it chooses not to build as by what it does, allowing the landscape—the jungle, the ocean, the shade—to remain the true protagonist of the project.