Costa Rica Congress Hall
What grounds a civic space in its community?
San Jose, Costa Rica
Competition
![featured-image](https://caza.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Costa-Rica_Banner-1.jpg)
Our design for Costa Rica’s new Congress Hall revisits the country’s legacy of tropical modernism, inviting citizens of Costa Rica to imagine how architecture can embody social struggle and a new vision for an ecological future.
![](https://caza.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Congressional-Offices_Evening-View.jpeg)
The building comprises a series of structurally interdependent hypercubes clad in steel louvers. Each cube appears as a unit, but each gains its strength through physical connectivity. This formal duality invites reflection on the role of the public in contemporary democracies, which depend on the productive interaction of a multiplicity of individual viewpoints and perspectives.
![](https://caza.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Screen-Shot-2021-04-25-at-7.16.41-PM-1024x806.png)
Paying homage to the central role Costa Rica’s ecology plays in its identity and history, the building hosts a series of verdant hanging landscapes and sky terraces covered in native trees and plantings that invite the landscape into the structure itself.
![](https://caza.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Plenary-Hall_Units-Analysis-888x1024.jpeg)
- SIZE: 300,205 SQF
- PROJECT TEAM: Carlos Arnaiz, Laura del Pino
- CLIENT: Costa Rica Government