ESCA Playa is a Shoreline’s Natural Rhythm Rendered in Concrete

On the edge of Playa’s coastline, ESCA Playa is carved from the coast, not set upon it. Designed by Mohamed Badie for ESCĀ Hospitality Group, the project studies how wind, tide, and pressure indents landforms, then turns those forces into structure. Surfaces read eroded from shell; openings excavated over positioned.
“We treated natural forces as operative tools rather than aesthetic references,” Badie says, describing how catenary geometries and biomorphic logic guided the project. Instead of imitating nature, the architecture behaves as if it belongs to it; thickening where it carries load, thinning where it can breathe, dissolving boundaries until interior and exterior feel continuous.
The envelope, cast as a single monolithic shell, carries the logic of sediment and shoreline. “The structure had to feel grown, not assembled. It needed to behave as an adaptive system, responsive to light, pressure and climate,” says Badie. Carved voids regulate air, shade and circulation. Reflected light moves across the undulating surfaces making the building shift through the day like a landform in motion.