The V-House at Verana / Heinz Legler

The V-House. An amazing jungle retreat near the fishing village of Yelapa in tropical Mexico. This rustic-modern aesthetic hotel was designed by Heinz Legler, who used to own a film set construction company and Veronique Lievre, previously a set decorator, from Paris. They started this project as their personal hideaway, but it ended up construction an hotel in a 5 acre area, with infinity pool, spa, restaurants, yoga hut and 8 guest rooms.

This year they expanded their hotel with V-Houses, 5 units with 3 units for hotel staff, 2 for guests, a kitchen and a shared bathroom. This three tower-houses have a particular structure, raising from a small concrete foundation as you can see on the construction pictures. The V Houses are made out of steel, plywood and red corrugated iron roofs.

The idea to build those ‘outlooks’ came from Jo Scheer who had build his ‘hoochs’ in Puerto Rico and Oregon. He used mainly Bamboo or Douglas fir poles; we decided to use metal instead. With basically no environmental impact or foot print, those structures can be built on any type of surface condition. Flat ground, steep hills, lots of vegetation, trees, water, sand or whatever else might be in the way for any other design or construction.

With 16’ off the ground they also created an instant spectacular view where there normally wouldn’t be one. Each room has a floor size of 16’x16’ but since all walls tilt outwards the actual space when standing is increased to 18’x18’ and by the time you look at the ceiling we are at 21’x21’.

The houses are self contained. Solar panels on top, compost toilets and all grey water is treated and reused in our gardens. Since it was an experiment there is room for improvements and definitely a learning curve. Disadvantage, this type of design and construction would have never been approved by any building department in US.

Architect: Heinz Legler
Location: Yelapa, Mexico
Client: Verana, Hotel&Spa
Construction year: 2007
Constructed Area: 5 x 1 sqm
Interior Area: 92 sqm
Budget: USD$79,000
Photographs: Martin Kunz