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MIGUEL ÁNGEL ARAGONÉS
Mexican architect Miguel Ángel Aragonés is known worldwide
for his style, combining the purity of minimalism with decorative
lighting and the beauty of natural landscapes. Self-taught and
independent, unconnected to architecture circles, schools and
associations, he started working in 1984, at only twenty years of
age. Since then he has completed hundreds of projects, both in
the residential and hospitality sectors. He took part in the first
Architecture Biennale organized by the Conaculta and Instituto
Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and his work has been
exhibited in Mexico and abroad, garnering international attention.
Aragonés believes that although it is very tempting for architects
to feel as if they were artists, they are in fact a hybrid figure that
must stay grounded and take into account the specific needs of
the people who will inhabit the spaces they create. Much more
than beautiful buildings, his projects are constructions on a human
scale, focused on their inhabitants and respectful of nature and
the landscape.
His latest projects – the Encanto Hotel in Acapulco, Rombo IV
villa in Mexico City and Mar Adentro in San José del Cabo – all
feature a perfect harmony between minimalism and a strong
sense of light.
We talk about Mar Adentro, a complex that combines 198 hotel
rooms with exclusive private homes on the gulf separating the
Baja California Peninsula from the Mexican mainland. A stun-
ning archipelago of white volumes floating on the water around
a cocoon that looks like the nest of a giant seabird, all connected
by walkways from which a glimpse of the ocean can be caught
in the background.
What was your impression when you first visited San José
del Cabo, one of the most densely populated areas of Baja
California?
The first time I visited this site and took in the desert and the diaph-
anous, clear sea running along a horizontal line in the background,
I felt the enormous drive of the water under a scorching sun. It was
the purest, most minimalist landscape a horizon could have drawn.
