Altarena

This stretch of the Sonoran coast is a thin bar of sand with the sea on one side and a grid of salt evaporation ponds on the other. It reads as industrial ground. It is also, already, shallow water held in place — which is exactly what a resort lagoon is.

Altarena works with that. The plan cuts a lagoon into the existing pond field instead of dredging virgin beach, and gives it the soft edge the salt pans never had: sand beaches, planted islands, a swimming shelf. What was a rectangle becomes a shoreline.

The casitas then take that shoreline one deep, each with its own stretch of water and its own palm. Behind them the beach club holds the pools and the food, on the one piece of ground high enough to look over everything.

Arrival is from the highway, through a palm-lined boulevard that turns its back on the parking. You never see the sea until the lagoon gives it to you.