How They Pulled It Off: A Whisper of a Kitchen Table in Todos Santos

Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.

Greg Armas, the founder of boutique and fashion label Assembly New York, came to Todos Santos from Los Angeles by way of Tijuana, kicking off 20 years of trips with friends from Los Angeles. Armas fell in love with the area’s slow pace and soulful energy, and those trips became an annual pilgrimage. When he met his now wife, Gabriela Minguez, in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, he was eager to share the place he loved. Eventually, the pair made their way to Todo Santos that same year, and started the search for a home away from home.

The couple were initially on the hunt for a fixer-upper, but one fateful night under a palapa-roofed taco stand led them to something completely different: an empty parcel land overlooking the water. Despite the change in plans, they knew immediately it was the spot for them. "It’s on a beautiful little crest, right where the desert and the ocean meet," says Greg. "I just loved it."

With the land purchased, the couple now faced a bigger challenge: deciding what to build, despite neither having designed or built a home before. However, both had design inclinations: in addition to Greg's background at Assembly, Gabriela is a clothing designer. "It was a long process of figuring out what the rules were for the house. You have this blank piece of paper and it can become anything," says Greg. Editing their abundance of ideas became foundational to the design. "We’re not stark minimalists, but we’re definitely reductionists. If something doesn’t need to be there, [we ask] if it’s possible to remove it."