Ecological spirit. Villa Monoi by OsArq

DDescription of project by OsArq

Villa Monoi is a holiday home at the southern end of Playa Tamarindo located in the province of Guanacaste Costa Rica. This zone of Costa Rica belongs to an area of ​​the most arid country affected by a pronounced dry season lasting one third of the year. The flora and fauna belong to the dry tropical forest and the region in general suffers from occasional droughts and water scarcity. The house is introverted since its location does not allow for the enjoyment of exterior views more than the groves of a green area contiguous to the property in the middle of a residential development.

The house seeks to integrate spaces that are commonly individual or isolated as they would be a room, bathroom and outdoor terrace, or as it would be a room, kitchen, dining room, entrance and outdoor terrace. In this way it manages to reduce the footprint of the spaces without them feeling small and incorporates the exterior into the livable spaces.

The building system of the house is non-traditional and consists of an integral structure of prefabricated profiles in cold-bent steel, this allowed a very light and flexible construction system mounted on a structural slab that allowed to explore flat roofs in a region where the norm it is to mitigate the climate and the rains with high sloping roofs.

The house uses a series of systems to minimize the consumption of energy and resources, including a treatment plant for all the water in the house, which is redistributed underground to irrigate a garden with low water consumption. The materials used in the house are industrial in nature and most of the house is built with cold rolled steel that is infinitely recyclable and low cost.

Passive design was used to obtain cross ventilation and natural lighting in all interior spaces where the social space of kitchen-living-dining room is not conditioned and opens to the exterior on three of its four sides.

The new construction technologies and industrial materials opened the possibility of exploring and proposing a reinterpretation of a modern architecture in the dry tropics.