Villa Downtown 54 | 5 Bedroom Villa in La Privada, Aldea Zamá

Two bodies of water, one at ground level and one on the roof. The first runs twenty five metres along the side of the house, a lap pool floored in stone that shifts colour as the light moves across it, a floating stone table set into the water at the halfway point. The second sits above the treeline, heated, curved, open to the canopy in every direction. Most houses in Aldea Zamá offer one or the other. This one does not choose.

The Living Level

A timber soffit carries the length of the ground floor and out over the terrace, so the ceiling reads as continuous whether you are inside or beside the pool. Glass slides away along the pool side. The living room takes a single long modular sofa facing the water, and behind it a bar counter in book matched marble runs toward a wall of stacked stone lit from within its niches.

The kitchen sits under the same timber ceiling, black cabinetry against a marble island with leather counter seating, a run of clerestory windows behind the range framing the planting outside. Dining is in the glazed corner, a table for ten with jungle on two sides and stone garden columns beyond the glass.

The Rooms

Five bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms. Timber floors throughout, layered rugs, restrained palettes in sand and clay. One room takes a circular porthole cut through the wall, a piece of architectural mischief that also happens to frame the canopy perfectly. Another carries an oversized timber framed mirror the height of the wall. The bathrooms are where the house raises its voice: one is clad floor to ceiling in green marble, three round mirrors above carved stone basins, the veining doing most of the work.

The Setting

La Privada is a gated pocket within Aldea Zamá, Tulum's planned residential district, paved and quiet, sitting between the town centre and the beach road with easy reach of both.