Yuu' Kee' House: em-estudio Splits a Oaxacan Home with a Creek

A creek gives Casa Yuu' Kee' both its name and its floor plan. The word means "stone creek" in Zapotec, and according to the architects at em-estudio, the watercourse "flows down the site, separating the social area from the private area of the house, which are joined by a bridge."

The house stands in San Pedro Pochutla, Mexico, and was completed in 2025. It measures 985 square metres. Ivan Esqueda Martinez and Francisco Esqueda Martinez led the project as lead architects, with Berenice Galindo on the design team. Bardana handled the landscape architecture, and José Luis Reyes Ortiz served as general contractor.

The project description, provided by the architects, is brief. What it establishes is a clear organizational logic: the site's natural drainage becomes the hinge between public and private life rather than an obstacle to it. The bridge is the connective gesture, stitching the two halves of the program across running water.

Materials listed for the project are wood and concrete. Photography by Ivan Esqueda Martínez and Nin Solis shows exterior balconies and timber structures set against a forested coastal site, with interior images highlighting exposed wooden beams over living and dining spaces. Drawings in the project gallery include a site plan, an entrance plaza plan, plans for the main house and a typical casita, and a longitudinal section.

The specification sheet also names the manufacturers involved: David Pompa, La Metropolitana, Mosaicos Oaxaca, and Tucurinca — a roster of Mexican design and craft brands consistent with the project's regional material identity.

Casa Yuu' Kee' was curated for ArchDaily by Valentina Díaz and published on September 30, 2026, joining a portfolio of Mexican residential work that treats hydrology and topography as generative constraints rather than problems to be engineered away.