AW² have been shortlisted for Hotel Under 50 Rooms – Americas/Caribbean Award in The International Hotel and Property Awards 2020.
Kasiiya Papagayo is a boutique eco-lodge located in Costa Rica. This lodge is a discrete invitation to question our sedentary civilisation, a type of return to simple pleasures. The eco-concept removes the seasoned luxury traveller from their comfort zone and succinctly resumes the project’s grounding philosophy: appreciate the Earth without consuming it.
The client wanted to create a hotel that would allow the guests to be as close to nature as they felt comfortable. The eco-lodge covers 2000m² and contains 14 tents, a beach bar, restaurant, spa and communal spaces. The project was to be environmentally focused with the possibility to leave the land without a trace. The concept naturally evolved into a tent layout, and AW² proposed a flexible system of platforms that allowed the client to choose the perfect spot for each room, view, shadow from a tree, whale viewing spot, etc. Kasiiya Papagayo was completed without cutting down a single tree and without the use of concrete and nails. It was designed to be 100% solar powered, the water is drawn fresh from an on-site well and all vehicles used on property are electric.
Key concepts throughout are the balance between community and exclusivity and the balance between wilderness and comfort. Kasiiya Papagayo is composed on the scale of a village, made up of clusters of tents, densifying the habitat in some areas and then letting nature take full rein in others. Constructed from mainly local natural materials, each tent offers its guests total comfort with bespoke furniture designed by AW². Accessible from a private path, each tent is carefully orientated to reconnect with nature alone.
Kasiiya Papagayo has propelled architecture and the boutique hotel experience into a new dimension, or one might say, a new ecology. Its luxury and exceptional elegance may well lie in cultivating a new relationship with the world, more secretive, more respectful, and more genuine as well. Architecture and nature can live in symbiosis rather than in opposition, without one trying to gain ground over the other.
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