On the Bay

As the world begins to open up again, and the possibility of a much-needed get-away increases, where are you heading? Let us suggest the long and winding boardwalk of La Paz, a coastal city in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, where you’ll find the Baja Club hotel, newly opened by the boutique hotel brand Grupo Habitat.

Baja Club, a recently opened hotel in La Paz, a coastal city in Mexico, is our pick of new getaways.

Much of Baja Club sits in a renovated, colonial-style hacienda – a low, wide, quietly noble white-lacquered brick building that looks out over the boardwalk and onto the water. The hacienda was built in 1910 to house an oyster pearl harvesting company, and many of its original details remain. There is a huge set of double doors at the entrance, and grand ironwork windows with ornamental grills across the building’s facade. Inside, you’ll find a lobby, a café and a quiet, handsome library. And beyond that there’s a new and very bold architectural addition, a large, slowly spiralling concrete staircase, inspired by the great Modernist architects and set against the property’s original red-brick outer wall, which links the site’s original structure to a new, four-story extension.

Baja Club was renovated by the Mexico City-based architect Max von Werz (Grupo Habitat is also based in the Mexican capital), who envisioned the extension as a non-intrusive L-shaped wing. The extension contains the hotel’s 32 guest rooms, some of them enormous and each with a private patio or balcony, as well as a spa and, above it all, a roof terrace that gives you a view over the bay.

The hotel’s interiors were completed by Jaune, a Parisian design firm whose founders once worked together at Studio KO and who for this project were inspired by the Mexico City home of architect Luis Barragan, known for its use of light, natural materials, and bold colours.

At Baja Club there are red terrazzo floors, traditional Mexican ceramic lamps, handy desks, and walls coloured faintly in flat colours. All around are various local materials that appeal very much to us: brickwork, rich earthenware, deeply coloured timber. In the red-and-white stripes of cushions used in the guest rooms and on the poolside loungers, Jaune, who also designed the site’s wicker chairs, nod at the hotel’s coastal location. It is the poolside loungers you will daydream about long after you leave. Each is positioned square to the pool, some of them raised on brickwork beds. And all are serviced by the hotel’s bar. 

www.bajaclubhotel.com

Words: Editorial Board

Photography: Grupo Habitat