How the compound works

This is not a single house with a corridor of bedrooms. It is a group of buildings behind a wall, with gardens, courtyards and paths between them. You move between rooms by going outside, which sounds like a compromise and turns out to be the best thing about the place.

It grew rather than being planned in one go: the brick-and-adobe buildings first, the modernist volumes added later. The result is a compound of parts from different moments, joined by planting and paths rather than hallways.

Practically, the house has a middle where everyone ends up and edges where nobody will find you. Groups sort themselves into that geometry quickly.

The centre of gravity is outdoors. The long table beside the open-air kitchen is where most meals happen and where people keep sitting after the plates are cleared. The pool terrace takes the middle of the day; the courtyards take the hours in between.

Indoors, the living spaces are arranged for conversation, with art in the room and doors open onto the garden. Eight people fit in a house like this without feeling crowded because nobody is competing for the same space at the same time.

There are two fully equipped kitchens — one in the Adobe House, one in the Casita — so cooking for the group and someone making coffee at seven in the morning are not the same event.

The four bedrooms are distributed across the buildings rather than lined up along a hall, and that distance is the feature. People keep different hours on holiday, and the compound absorbs that without anyone having to negotiate.

Beyond the bedrooms there are places to be alone for an hour: a shaded corner of a courtyard, a chair in the garden, a room with a door you can close while the rest of the group is at the pool. On a longer stay with a group, that matters more than almost anything on a listing.

It also means the house suits a mixed group — two families, three couples, or friends with very different temperaments — without forcing a single rhythm.

The outdoor space is the connective tissue of the compound rather than a yard attached to a house. Planted courtyards sit between the buildings, with palms overhead and brick and stone underfoot, and the saltwater pool at the centre of the day.

The day moves around the shade. Mornings belong to whichever courtyard has the early light, the middle of the day to the pool and whatever is covered, and the late afternoon opens the whole compound back up as the light comes in low.

That is also why the house handles a hot week better than its footprint suggests. There is always somewhere cooler to move to.

Casa del Arte began as the home and studio of the sculptor Peter Ambrose. The modernist buildings came later, designed by his son, the architect Garrick Ambrose. Art from Mexico and elsewhere is throughout the compound.

It is not hung as a gallery. Pieces sit in the rooms people use — on plinths, in niches, along the path to the pool — so you meet the work in passing rather than in a viewing.

The compound is in Las Tunas, about a ten-minute drive north of Todos Santos centro. Playa Las Tunas is a five-minute walk from the house — good for walking and watching the Pacific rather than a promised swimming beach. La Pastora, a surf break, is about five minutes north by car, and Cerritos is about twenty minutes south, where swimming conditions vary by day.

A car is recommended. Town, the beaches south, and provisions all involve a short drive, and taxis are not reliably available in Las Tunas.

A group that wants to be together but not on top of one another. People who will cook at least a few nights. Anyone who would rather stay in one remarkable place for a week than move between three ordinary ones.

It is a compound, older in places, with outdoor circulation and a garden that is genuinely a garden. That is what makes it good, and it is worth knowing in advance rather than expecting a single sealed modern villa.