Thermal comfort, connection to the landscape, and low-impact materials guide professionals in the Central American country, where CASACOR debuts in early 2027
Submitted at Feb 27, 2026, 10:00 AM
A varanda com beirais largos é uma solução típica para lidar com as chuvas de regiões tropicais. Arquitetura e interiores de Brown Gallegos Studio. (Roberto D’Ambrosio Suárez/CASACOR)
Over the past four decades, Costa Rican architecture has built a deep dialogue with the tropics: it has evolved from a modernist language to a way of designing closely tied to the climate, landscape, and local vegetation. Architecture and interior design have ceased to impose themselves on their surroundings to integrate with them, and have come to prioritize openness to greenery, control of solar exposure, and environmental comfort. More than a trend, this transformation consolidated the understanding of the building as a continuation of the territory.
Beginning in the late 1980s, this shift turned sustainability into an inescapable component of design. Strategies such as cross ventilation, the use of natural light, generous eaves, and solar energy became part of everyday solutions with their own cultural expression. By educating generations who understand design as a response to the country’s social, urban, and environmental conditions, the School of Architecture at the University of Costa Rica played a fundamental role in this process.
Grandes painéis envidraçados tiram partido da iluminação natural e integram a construção ao entorno. Arquitetura e interiores de Brown Gallegos Studio. (Tanja Mikolcic/CASACOR)
In parallel, the growth of international tourism and ecotourism spurred an ecological architecture linked to lodges and small jungle hotels, which drew on bioclimatic strategies and low-impact materials. This laboratory laid the groundwork for the formalization of green buildings in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when sustainability became an explicit agenda through environmental certifications, energy efficiency, and the rehabilitation of existing heritage, articulating urban memory with low impact.
In the most recent Costa Rican architecture, this concept now also embraces a regenerative, urban vision. Projects that integrate biological corridors, water management, reforestation and smart technologies seek not only to reduce impacts, but to restore ecosystems and improve the resilience of cities and territories. Faced with the challenges of urban growth, mobility, and social equity, architecture positions itself as a fundamental actor in building a country in which sustainability not only adorns the built form, but defines it as a core element of its contemporary identity.
