Mountain hut in Costa Rica

VOID designed a cabin in the woods in Jardín de Dota, famous for its coffee production, teaching construction and sustainable elements to seasonal workers.

VOID, EFC cabin, Jardín de Dota, Costa Rica, 2016

VOID architects designed a small cabin near San José, Costa Rica, in the cold and foggy mountains of Dota – well known for its coffee production – over a hill surrounded by a small forest of oak trees. The visuals, landscape, orientation, winds and access points were key points for the architectural program.

The project involves a central volume equipped with all the serving spaces: kitchen, bathrooms and laundry room. The wet spaces are all focused in one point for better efficiency, leaving more freedom on the display of the served areas. Outdoors and indoors merge together in a stereotomic mass, solid, and rocklike, that sets itself above ground in continuity with the surroundings.

Next to this volume, the served spaces – living, dining and bedrooms – are directed to both sides in such a way that they open on one face to the valley and mountains and in the opposite direction to the oak forest. The environment is the main protagonist of the space, reflecting to the architecture that is articulated between pieces of radiata pine wood, plywood and metallic structures that look for support and cling to the mass, in a combination of materials that mix warm and cold elements.

The materials used include certified, locally grown pinewood planks, concrete with coarse aggregates from the regional quarry and stone cladding, while the construction has been taken over by local seasonal workers, that have been taught construction elements in order to acquire new skills to use all year-round.