The architecture firm Estudio Macías Peredo based on Guadalajara has created Punta Caliza Hotel, an intimate sanctuary on the remote island of Holbox, Mexico, based on the region’s ancient buildings. Isla Holbox is a fishing village and it is ony accesible with ferry.
The Punta Caliza hotel is just 1km away from the Gulf of Mexico’s emerald waters, on a triangular plot carefully selected by its owners, the Muñoz family. The family visited Holbox in 2012 while scouting for their first hotel project and straightaway was attracted by the minimal development and pristine environment of the island and soon worked with the local community to procure the land.
Claudia Muñoz introduced her parents to the instructors Magui Peredo and Salvador Macías Corona of Estudio Macías Peredo and the famiy with the studio formed a partneship to create their vision  for Punta Caliza. The 12-room boutique hotel was inspired by Mayan architecture of the Yucatán Peninsula, in both construction and design.
For limestone floors and walls, the team employed chukum – an ancient Mayan stucco used to seal water cisterns. “It feels fresh and sandy, and provides the hotel with a soothing white colour,” Claudia Muñoz told Dezeen. Punta Caliza’s design concept is a modern, more geometric interpretation of Mayan structures.  Each room has a private plunge pool that connects to the main canal and all the roofs are tidily thatched, a common characteristic throughout the island that helps sustain its authentic Mayan heritage.
The chukum-covered structures create a vertical dialogue with the rich woodwork above, all built using red cedar from the family’s tree farm. In 2018, Punta Caliza won the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize from the IIT College of Architecture in Chicago, in addition to representing Mexico at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
The Yucatán Peninsula’s north and east coasts are booming with new accommodation offerings, built to cater for the growing number of tourists visiting each year.