Architecture, sustainability and paradigmas, our story
As life guides, I can say that design and nature have been our permanent topics, understanding design in artistic manifestations, objects and buildings. Nature as a guide, as it is linked with the human being, generating admiration, respect and care.
20 years ago, the concept of sustainable architecture, was emerging, and we set out to understand and manage solutions such as passive air conditioning strategies, low ecological footprint materials, clean energy generation, respect and inclusion of biodiversity, care of water use, among others. This also involved understanding the measurement and certification systems of what was proposed.
This is how our projects were always based on a solution appropriate to the climate (in this case tropical), lightweight, low-impact systems when building in natural areas, local materials, and always linking about biodiversity, especially for the urban areas.
Vast majority of our clients, Costa Ricans and foreigners, were looking for the poetic dream, of escaping the madding crowd of cities and living immersed in nature in a building that has the least possible impact on the planet.
Costa Rica becomes the idealization of a place where this desire can be materialized, it is quiet (without an army), with clean air and water, simple people, and overwhelming nature. Everything is true, and if the dream can get done in its majority. The issues of conflict, ends up being cultural and economic, it is an expensive country, and a little confusing, but even so, the concerned ab wealthy elites looking for alternative lives, generate work, and allow us to explore and experiment with concepts, carrying out positive environmental and social initiatives.
We cannot reach everyone, but we can try to permeate society in the right direction. We were editors and participants in the generation of RESET, a national standard for sustainable buildings; and we have been andwe still are educators, as a complementary measure to our services. We like to think that in this way we contribute to build a thought, and that we influence local designers, why?, to have better architecture, and more conscious, generate design with posture, and not just manufacturing.
Costa Rica continues to be a destination for dreamers, and not only good-looking millionaires, but also for many people who feel overwhelmed by social and political systems, exhausted by a stressful lifestyle linked to technology and vehicles; We hope that there will always be room for them, as long as they are humble and respectful of how things are. We are not free from consumerism, ignorance and other vices, but we continue to be an opportunity to materialize life dreams, and lower our way of life footprint.
