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By Stacy Shoemaker Rauen
Photography by Motive Media
Surrounded by a combination of lush vegetation and white sand beaches, Carl Ede, principal and director of design of Dallas-based Three Architecture, didn't have to look very far for inspiration for the Rosewood Mayakoba. "There's a wonderful quality about the site," he says. "Everything starts with the site."
The hotel is the newest high-end property to open in the Riviera Mayakoba, an ecological enclave made up of 593 square acres of mangrove forest and jungle on Mexico's Riviera Maya. Instead of simply building a series of massive hotels on the one-mile coastline, Madrid-based construction company and owner OHL, with help from a team of engineers, architects, biologists, hydrologists, and tourism marketing experts, spent six years and more than a million dollars researching the habitat to build the ultimate luxurious eco-friendly destination. Rosewood is the second hotel to open in this visionary preserved haven where guests get around by electric boats dubbed lanchas on a network of waterways and lagoons that OHL literally raised to the surface from under a layer of Yucatan limestone. "Guest are really connected to this wonderful ecosystem," says Ede, mentioning that his firm was familiar with the area since Three also helped create the Fairmont Mayakoba.
With the design brief of a fresh, contemporary take on a Mayan fishing village, the architects built the hotel as though "it was literally growing up out of the site itself—out of the jungle, limestone formations, the trees, the beach," explains Ede, who worked with Spanish design firm Casa y Jardin on the four-year-long project. "It's Mayan with a modern sensibility." Some of the 128 units stand over the lagoon on concrete stilts; cutouts in wood patios treat guests to their own private aquarium viewing. Others are nestled into the jungle with skylights so guests can see the vegetation literally growing around them. While the remaining are stacked on top of each other: the bottom unit boasts heady views of the ocean, while the top room faces the lagoon and feels as though it is floating on a mangrove thanks to a rooftop terrace. 
Other luxurious (and many eco-sensitive) highlights include private plunge pools, massive outdoor showers and bathtubs, custom organic furniture done in a palette of beige and brown, wooden lattices, indigenous wood, marble, and limestone (reused from when the waterways were dug up), curved stonewalls, and indoor-outdoor spaces that blend seamlessly because of natural ventilation and an abundant use of expansive windows, lightwells, and terraces with broad angular overhangs.
"It's as much about embracing the natural features—tying in all the ecologies—as it is about the building," says Ede, adding that the Sense spa (the first of Rosewood's new brand) is built around a cenote, a natural limestone pool fed by subterranean springs, on its own island; guests walk on recycled plastic wood decking made in Mexico called PET to get to the spa cabins. "We pushed the engineers quite a bit. Such painstaking care was taken to preserve the mangrove, almost 90 percent of it, that it's about respecting and enjoying the environment."
For more information, visit www.rosewoodmayakoba.com or www.threearch.com.
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Luxury Preserved
April 8, 2008By Stacy Shoemaker Rauen
Photography by Motive Media
Surrounded by a combination of lush vegetation and white sand beaches, Carl Ede, principal and director of design of Dallas-based Three Architecture, didn't have to look very far for inspiration for the Rosewood Mayakoba. "There's a wonderful quality about the site," he says. "Everything starts with the site." The hotel is the newest high-end property to open in the Riviera Mayakoba, an ecological enclave made up of 593 square acres of mangrove forest and jungle on Mexico's Riviera Maya. Instead of simply building a series of massive hotels on the one-mile coastline, Madrid-based construction company and owner OHL, with help from a team of engineers, architects, biologists, hydrologists, and tourism marketing experts, spent six years and more than a million dollars researching the habitat to build the ultimate luxurious eco-friendly destination. Rosewood is the second hotel to open in this visionary preserved haven where guests get around by electric boats dubbed lanchas on a network of waterways and lagoons that OHL literally raised to the surface from under a layer of Yucatan limestone. "Guest are really connected to this wonderful ecosystem," says Ede, mentioning that his firm was familiar with the area since Three also helped create the Fairmont Mayakoba. With the design brief of a fresh, contemporary take on a Mayan fishing village, the architects built the hotel as though "it was literally growing up out of the site itself—out of the jungle, limestone formations, the trees, the beach," explains Ede, who worked with Spanish design firm Casa y Jardin on the four-year-long project. "It's Mayan with a modern sensibility." Some of the 128 units stand over the lagoon on concrete stilts; cutouts in wood patios treat guests to their own private aquarium viewing. Others are nestled into the jungle with skylights so guests can see the vegetation literally growing around them. While the remaining are stacked on top of each other: the bottom unit boasts heady views of the ocean, while the top room faces the lagoon and feels as though it is floating on a mangrove thanks to a rooftop terrace. Other luxurious (and many eco-sensitive) highlights include private plunge pools, massive outdoor showers and bathtubs, custom organic furniture done in a palette of beige and brown, wooden lattices, indigenous wood, marble, and limestone (reused from when the waterways were dug up), curved stonewalls, and indoor-outdoor spaces that blend seamlessly because of natural ventilation and an abundant use of expansive windows, lightwells, and terraces with broad angular overhangs."It's as much about embracing the natural features—tying in all the ecologies—as it is about the building," says Ede, adding that the Sense spa (the first of Rosewood's new brand) is built around a cenote, a natural limestone pool fed by subterranean springs, on its own island; guests walk on recycled plastic wood decking made in Mexico called PET to get to the spa cabins. "We pushed the engineers quite a bit. Such painstaking care was taken to preserve the mangrove, almost 90 percent of it, that it's about respecting and enjoying the environment."
For more information, visit www.rosewoodmayakoba.com or www.threearch.com.
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