A Slice of Heaven from Costa Rica
The Perfect House for Mrs. V
Located in La Vega, Costa Rica among beautiful shrubs and lush green trees there is a modish shed that awaits. The spacious airy home is built to spend retirement years for the lady who wanted a place that felt natural and peaceful. House V is a dream come true, with simple and sophisticated rooms, and elegant wood cladding on the walls.
In our academic context we seem to start by having to unlearn several notions about our built environment in order to learn how to make architecture. But when it comes to construction we move between the institutionalized tradition and the “informal” one; the latter represents the majority of what has been built in this country… The house is located in a hamlet where no other architect has worked before, surrounded by informal constructions such as old traditional houses, milking parlors, warehouses and cattle pens , and the fragile ones that emerge and disappear without a trace like the tents vendors use to sell fruits on the roadside. As a house of minimal dimensions it will barely incorporate a trajectory inside it, rather, it will be the destination and summary of the necessary journeys for the owner to move to this place, which involved anticipation and nostalgia until the house became the definitive residence. Under the same concept, it is possible to see the moon from the master bedroom when it is low in the sky thanks to V shaped polycarbonate ceiling. Mrs. V. (the owner and a tireless cook) needed a house that could be built with her retirement savings (which resulted in $ 400 per sq. m.) and that could accommodate her strong personality and the mementos of her life without worrying about asking for the architect´s opinion to make use of the architecture as she please.
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