St. Regis Bahia Beach Resort

Puerto Rico

A modern new home becomes a work of art that makes the most of Puerto Rico’s soothing seascape.

WHEN DESIGNING this oceanfront residence for an art enthusiast, the architect aimed to make the home a sculpture worthy of the owner’s collection. He achieved it with a modern, minimalist approach that marries form with function and blurs the lines between inside and out-of-doors. “It’s the intersection of art and architecture,” says Scott Lee, president and principal of the San Francisco–based SB Architects. The newly constructed 14,000-square-foot, two-story project, located at the St. Regis Bahía Beach Resort in Puerto Rico, opens to the Atlantic Ocean and was designed to mirror its sun-drenched, breezy surroundings.

“It has a hint of midcentury modernism, with its overhangs and horizontal lines and its simplicity of color and form,” Lee says. The Puerto Rican fashion designer Nono Maldonado, who also specializes in interior design, oversaw the interiors and created several bespoke pieces for the five-bedroom, seven-bath property (which also includes quarters for staff). “It’s sea and sky,” Maldonado says of the minimalist aesthetic. He chose whitewashed oak and muted hues to evoke a serene airiness and limestone from Portugal to create a matte, sandy look to the floors. Touches of blue and green mimic the changing tints of the ocean and the lush grounds, which were designed by the global landscape-architecture firm EDSA.