Casa Music sits in Santa Lucía de Heredia, on a property that was surrounded by coffee plantations at the time of construction and has since been absorbed by urban sprawl.

The house composes around two volumes. The main one is elongated and bent — social areas to the west, bedrooms to the east. A secondary volume to the north contains the service spaces. Both are built in exposed clay block laid in a stretcher bond — a material Beer had used shortly before in his parents’ house a few blocks away, which the clients had seen and wanted for their own. Within Beer’s broader practice, the exposed clay block here is not simply a material choice: it belongs to a sustained exploration of mampostería expuesta as a complete sensory system, where texture, color, thermal mass, and the rhythm of the bond together constitute the spatial experience as much as the plan does. The volumes taper at the top following the pitch of the shed roofs, which drain into a canoa beam that becomes a water feature as it falls into a small internal side patio.

The site’s topography carries into the interior as a series of level changes that modulate scale room by room. The family area subdivides into four distinct zones through the placement of a central fireplace and a mezzanine study above — a warm, layered interior where the intense color of the clay walls, the honey-toned timber structure of the roofs, windows and balustrades, and the sounds of rain and fire work together as a complete sensory environment for the Music family.

Photographer: Ricardo Chaves