New Luxury Vacation Residence — west indies
After spending many years visiting an exclusive Caribbean island, the client for this project purchased a prime hilltop site to create a personal retreat. She commissioned Martin Jay Rosenblum and Associates to design a “fantasy” vacation residence for the site that would indulge her love of gardens, views and dramatic architecture, while being practical to construct and maintain.
The solution was to create a dramatic Moorish style home that could easily be constructed with locally available building materials, machinery, and methods. By working in this style, the architects were able to employ an architectural idiom that was perfectly suited for the project’s requirements: it allowed them to address issues such as passive sun and heat control, storm water collection into cisterns, and protection of gardens from ocean winds. It was a style that also took advantage of the local workforce’s experience and skill using concrete, concrete block and render.
Essentially the house is a series of pavilions connected by covered corridors, gardens and courtyards that create a series of outdoor rooms. These exterior rooms draw the tropical environment into the home and give a visitor a sense of living outdoors and being intimately involved with the serene environment surrounding them, while having access to all the amenities of a luxurious home. The pavilions are characterized by expanses of walls that are almost sculptural and punctuated with openings precisely located to frame views and capture ocean breezes. The structures are further enlivened with the kind of exuberant detailing found in Moorish architecture.
Although constructed from simple materials, the design has a rich architectural presence that was attained through a rigorous attention to scale, rhythm, geometry, and manipulation of light and shade. This Caribbean home is both an imposing residence and place of romance and fantasy. This exotic integration of luxury, nature, and stunning views is truly a unique experience that provides a peaceful oasis from the modern world.