The Reyes Rios + Larrain Studio of Architecture and Design has made an impressive, long-lasting, and positive impact on the face of tourism in Yucatán. This award-winning team is renowned for hacienda and colonial house restoration and remodeling. Some icons of their work include Hacienda Petac, Hotel Rosas & Xocolate, and the five haciendas of the Starwood Luxury Collection, including Hacienda Temozón, to name only a few.To meet and talk with this immensely creative and talented couple helps you to understand why their work is so highly respected: they bring together their respective talents in a way that creates a whole much greater than the sum of its parts. Let’s meet them:
YT: How do you decide which projects to undertake? What is the criteria?
Salvador: We tend to get involved in projects where there is interest on the part of the client toward some kind of design innovation. The clients who interest us are those who are conscious of the added value provided by the design in terms of generating a product which not only resolves the practical needs of the occupants, but which also allows them to live an integral experience of harmony and well-being.
Josefina: We accept any project which aims to be congruent and friendly with the conditions imposed by the place where it is situated, and at the same time will express its own character, independent of fashion or style.
YT: How do you approach a restoration or remodeling?
Salvador: In a restoration project, all the new spaces and elements, which we integrate, are a contemporary re-creation, and not simply a copy of the antique. In this way, the new always makes creative reference to the old, thereby assuring that the end result is a renovated building that not only keeps its original essence, but that also renews itself and acquires a new character which places it in the present looking toward the future.
YT: Describe the way you two work together, and how you work with your clients.
Josefina: Salvador is directly responsible for the conceptualization and direction of all the creative, technical, financial, and construction processes. I'm the art director, interior designer, and landscape designer, as well as the person who questions and self-criticizes every project that we produce in the studio; I often play the role of the devil’s advocate. My input is more about how the spaces flow from one to the other; how the spaces join together and how you live in them.
Salvador: From my own hand the architectural designs, furniture, graphic communication, and construction details are born. We are passionate about being involved in all the processes which allow a project to materialize, giving us the chance to learn from the professionals and artisans who we collaborate with. We always maintain a very open relationship with our clients in order to be able to understand and interpret their ideas, working with them in a process of constant communication and feedback.
YT: What is the most rewarding moment for you during the design and construction process?
Salvador: When you realize that what you imagined on paper is surpassed by what is actually built.
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