Playa Viva - where Biophilia meets Living Ecology

Nestled along Mexico's Pacific coast, David Leventhal's Playa Viva is redefining hospitality through a radical commitment to regenerative design. More than just a boutique hotel, it's a living ecosystem where architecture breathes, nature flows freely, and every material tells a story of sustainability.

Imagine waking in a treehouse suspended among palm trees, with no doors or windows—just an uninterrupted connection to the landscape. This is Leventhal's vision: hospitality that doesn't just minimise environmental impact, but actively regenerates it.

The resort's structures are poetry in natural materials. Bamboo "bones" form parabolic roofs, carefully woven and raised by hand. Shower floors become canvases of meticulously placed pebbles, each stone positioned with artisan precision. Wall pigments are sourced locally—rich oranges and browns extracted directly from mountain landscapes, mixed with unconventional ingredients like hay, horse manure, and even turtle eggshells.

"We're not just building rooms," Leventhal explains, "we're creating experiences that transform how humans interact with environment."

READ on and listen to/ watch the podcast….

This transformation begins with radical design choices. Solar panels provide 100% off-grid electricity. Air conditioning is minimised, with innovative systems like the "Evening Breeze" technology cooling only specific areas. The goal isn't comfort through separation, but comfort through connection.

A task force for nature – where sustainability matters

Morgan Taylor leads the biodiversity side of Greengage, a multidisciplinary environmental consultancy who cover everything from energy and carbon assessments, sustainability, health, wellbeing, socio-economic assessment, and EIA management as well as the whole gamut of biodiversity assessment through to planning.

As designers, architects, or planners, we all need to be mindful of the impact our ideas, advice and decisions have on the world around us. We recorded this interview in the summer last year* Their work is focused outside of the legislative and planning policy sphere in the world of natural capital and ecosystem service value assessment. So rather than working with developers where they are only brought in because there is a potential impact on biodiversity in the first place, they're working with a lot of people with regards to asset management, land management, informing how financial capital is put towards recovery of natural capital across managed assets.

We’ve got hundreds, maybe thousands of years of degradation and we need to take measures and understanding to address the impacts of our actions, and account for the significant loss of biodiversity particularly since the Industrial Revolution.

Morgan outlines all the different levels of legislation and planning policy that impact biodiversity in the built environment. He highlights three aspects of legislation and regulation that particularly drive positive change...

Podcasts