Located on Mexico’s Pacific coast, Rubra is a restaurant designed by Ana Paula de Alba and Ignacio Urquiza for chef Daniela Soto-Innes. The project is located on the Punta Mita peninsula, at one end of Banderas Bay. Lush vegetation flanks the access route. Guests can arrive on foot, by bicycle, or in a golf cart, along a path that disconnects them from the urban context and leads to a blind façade, inviting curiosity about what lies beyond.

A low tunnel (2.1 meters high and 6 meters long) emerges in the main terrace, a large space with views of the Sierra Madre Occidental and the ocean horizon across the bay. The space is made up of volumes of different heights, shapes, and dimensions, elements that define the structure and contain the program: an open kitchen, wine cellar, and bars. The flowerbeds also provide benches and the main seating area for visitors.

These volumes structure the complex and the layout is both strategic and precise, creating a spatial composition and directing views onto the natural surroundings, keeping the built environment out of sight and giving a sense of seclusion. This layout also produces openings for breezes to cool the space through cross ventilation. A large roof spans a column-free, 10 x 15-meter space, structured by a pergola grid that frames wooden lattices, allowing continuous light to enter during the day. Volumes such as the wine cellar, bar, and open kitchen act as structural elements supporting this roof, giving the perfect amount of shade in the roofed exterior. Depending on the weather, a sliding glass façade can enclose the main dining room to create a climate-controlled interior space protected from the elements while maintaining an outdoors feel.

Rubra is made of a single material, and Pablo Kobayashi helped create this monolithic monochrome stained and textured concrete structure in clear allusion to sand. Its rigid and precise modulation is softened by the rounded corners of the volumes, evoking the classic Mexican architecture of the Pacific coast. A balance between the color palette of the wooden furniture and the lush green of the vegetation is designed to complement and clad the sand-hued structure. The interior landscaping by Thalia Davidoff incorporates endemic plant species, as if some of the Nayarit jungle had been brought to each flowerbed and green space, blurring the boundaries between interior and exterior, and between the natural and the built environment. This creates the sensation of complete immersion in this coast’s emblematic shoreline: on the beach, between ocean and jungle.

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