The Peruvian coastline’s broad expanse and desert climate, bathed by Pacific Ocean surf, provided the context for architect Juan Carlos Doblado to create a home with a modern design that achieves a perfect symbiosis between architecture and nature.

The house is located on Playa La Isla and its geometric design captures the attention, breaking the monotony of the landscape and is guaranteed to offer both its owners and passersby something that is well worth a second look, while at the same time providing its owners with comfort and functionality.

“Their objective was quite clear from the beginning,” says Juan Carlos Doblado. “They wanted a beach house with a floor area that was bigger than the building plot. As they only wanted a single storey, we had to incorporate some of the surrounding area.”

The challenge was met by starting with a prism, which would incorporate all the home’s areas. The next stage was to “cut” the prism to create a large opening for the interior patio. This segment of the prism that had been cut was then moved forward to enable the terrace to be built. This produced an extremely interesting outcome, as it established a vertical relationship with the sky while providing a horizontal context in relationship to the sea.

This was no accident. Right from the start, the architect wanted the house to reflect the connection between its architecture and its setting; man and nature; desert and ocean. None of these elements can exist in isolation from the others; they have to exist as a single entity, thereby generating a dialectic relationship between enclosure and openness; opacity and transparency; intimacy and external appearance.

Once translated into its environmental context, the design used the rear of the property as a protection against the desert, while the front facade was opened up without reservation to the ocean, guaranteeing perpetual views of spectacular scenery.

The whole project took nine months from start to finish, with design work occupying the first two months, while construction took another seven months. The house has a built area of 258 square meters on a site measuring 209 square meters. Its decoration followed an uncompromisingly linear principle, which in the words of Juan Carlos Doblado, “enabled the furnishings to establish a dialogue with the house, while at the same time adding color to the whole experience.”

Thus the contemporary furniture both accessorizes the house and performs a functional role, while never detracting from the starring roles shared by the architecture and its natural surroundings. The end result demonstrates that the Playa La Isla beach house perfectly embodies its design priorities, faithfully following the guidelines of its creator.


The creator of the Playa La Isla beach house was born in Lima in 1963 and trained as an architect at Ricardo Palma University. After a period at the Institut Supérieur d’Architecture La Cambre in Brussels, Belgium, he won the Gold Medal awarded by the World Young Architects Forum for his urban project on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. In 2006 he was recognized by Wallpaper magazine as one of the 25 most innovative architects of his time. This recognition did not come easily and this example of his work that we have included in Vivir Bien is proof that it was well deserved.