Contextual Architecture and Landscape Design on a Preserved Island in Haiti

Cayemite Bungalows

Located on Petite Cayemite, one of the last untouched islands off Haiti’s southwest coast, this project offers an immersive and respectful experience, designed in harmony with the site’s natural and cultural character. The richness of the terrain, lush vegetation, striking rock formations, coconut palms, citrus trees, cassava, and sugarcane, guided the conception of the place.

Rather than imposing a predefined style, the design embraces an architecture and landscape that extend the site’s intrinsic qualities, resonating with its tropical climate and natural contours.

A Light Architecture in Dialogue with Its Environment

Volumes in Harmony with the Topography

The project includes eight bungalows and two suites arranged around a contemporary reception pavilion. Each structure is built from natural materials, conceived with a focus on lightness, natural ventilation, and openness to the landscape.

Timber frameworks, climate-adapted roofs, and wide, open façades create a direct connection with nature, inviting the sounds of the island, the movement of air, and the shifting presence of light.

A Seamless Continuity Between Indoors and Outdoors

Each bungalow is designed with elegant simplicity, featuring outdoor lounges, infinity pools, and generous terraces oriented toward panoramic views of Petite Cayemite’s coastline and the Gulf of Gonâve. These spaces encourage rest, contemplation, and reconnection with the island’s natural rhythm.

A Living Landscape Shaping the Experience

The landscape design extends the architecture to create full immersion in the island’s ecosystem. From the moment of arrival, a winding path lined with Scaevola and coconut palms leads visitors through the vegetation toward the reception pavilion, offering a gentle and gradual introduction to the site.

Each movement, whether along a shaded walkway or through a sunlit clearing becomes a sensory experience, shaped by the interplay of light, texture, and terrain.

Cayemite Bungalows embodies a contextual approach to island architecture, where every gesture, from the layout of pathways to the positioning of buildings is guided by the land, the climate, and local ways of living. It is not a style imposed upon a place, but a thoughtful response to its strength, softness, and contrasts.

An ecological retreat, peaceful and deeply connected to the living environment, offering a different way of inhabiting the world with the island, rather than simply on it.

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