No products in the cart.
What a lifetime of designing on this coast taught me about listening to place.
I studied architecture at the Universidad del Valle de México. I spent years learning the formal language of space — proportion, structure, circulation, light. And then I moved to Puerto Vallarta, and this city taught me something no studio ever did.
The most sophisticated design here has always come from listening to the place.
The Palm In The Conversation
Every time I design a space in Puerto Vallarta or anywhere in Banderas Bay, the palm is in the conversation. Not always literally — not every project calls for a thatched roof or a rattan headboard. But the values palm represents are always there: natural material intelligence, response to climate, connection to the landscape, craft passed down through generations.
When I choose a woven pendant for a dining room in Bucerías, I’m not just picking a light fixture. I’m connecting that room to a tradition of weaving that runs back to the Cora and Wixárika artisans of the Sierra Madre. When I specify a travertine floor for a terrace in Nuevo Vallarta and set a rattan chair and a potted palm beside it, I’m not assembling a trend. I’m telling a story about the place.
Original details carry an authenticity that reproductions never match — and here, the most authentic design tradition we have is the one that began on this coast thousands of years before the city had a name. The ancestors of Banderas Bay read the sun, the rain, the humidity, the breeze, and they built accordingly. They chose palm because it was the right answer to the question the climate was asking.
We’re still asking that same question. And the best design in Puerto Vallarta is still arriving at the same answer.
The Building That’s Always There
There’s a building I pass on my way through the Zona Romántica. It has been there for decades, with a palm roof re-thatched so many times the structure beneath it is older than anyone alive can account for. It isn’t luxurious. It isn’t “designed” in any formal sense. But beneath it, people eat, talk, laugh, and watch the Pacific — and it is, in its deepest nature, a perfectly intelligent answer to the question of how to live in Puerto Vallarta.
The ancestors of this coast worked that out long ago. They passed it down through generations of hands and rooflines and harvests, and it reached us still intact — still wise, still beautiful, still relevant. When I design a space in this city, I try never to forget that I’m working inside that inheritance.
The palm is always in the room.
Mara Sánchez is a licensed architect and interior designer based in Puerto Vallarta and the founder of Maukaa Design Studio. She works with clients across Banderas Bay and internationally, with a design philosophy rooted in the material intelligence and cultural heritage of Mexico’s Pacific coast.
Want to bring natural, ancestral materials into your own home? From palapa terraces to rattan and locally sourced artisan pieces, it’s central to how Maukaa approaches every project. Book a free consultation at:
Meet Maukaa Design:
Read also
