Cinema Paradiso

A filmmaker stars in his first role as an architect designing a chic home in miami.

- J. Michael Welton

Filmmaker and screenwriter Alejandro Landes, whose work has debuted at both Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals, has developed a finely tuned appreciation for drama. 

“The type of film I’m interested in has relationships – it takes you through a series of evocative experiences that, as a whole, create a transformation,” he says.

Now he’s applied that cinematic narrative to architecture in a scene-stealing home he calls Casa Bahia, in Miami, Fla. The 20,000-square-foot residence – overlooking Biscayne Bay from Coconut Grove – is his first design project.

Spare and minimal, with an exposed exoskeleton wrapped in teak, glass and stucco, the home could be likened to a Hollywood tour de force. “A friend said this house is more like a shot list than a floor plan,” he says.

Just as he might assemble a movie crew for a film, Landes gathered up a handpicked team of architects, builders, interior designers and landscape architects, and for two years they worked mightily to interpret his vision.

Among them were Bernard Zyscovich, who provided the schematic design; the architect of record Jerry Gavcovich; and renowned landscaper Raymond Jungles, one of Ocean Home’s Top Coastal Landscape Architects of 2016.

Landes’ mother, Catalina Echavarria, an award winning furniture and interior designer who has worked with Donna Karan and Cher, created all of the home’s bespoke and handcrafted interiors.

Landes says the construction process also recalled similarities between filmmaking and architecture. “It’s kind of like being on the set with a cinematographer who’s studied philosophy and a cameraman with no high school diploma,” he says.