AWAKE / Hyper-Diverse Territory as an Architectural Starting Point
Designing architecture in the Osa Peninsula goes far beyond projecting in an exuberant landscape. This is an environment that forces one to assume an extraordinary responsibility. Awake begins from a clear premise: intervening in one of the territories with the highest concentration of biodiversity on the planet requires regenerative architecture that deeply understands the place before intervening in it.
The Osa Peninsula has been recognized by National Geographic and Conservation International as one of the most important biodiversity hotspots on the planet. In less than 0.001% of the Earth’s surface, it concentrates approximately 2.5% of global biodiversity. More than 700 tree species, close to 50% of Costa Rica’s species, and emblematic fauna such as the jaguar, the tapir, the spider monkey and the scarlet macaw depend on these interconnected ecosystems.
Added to this is an extreme water dynamic: rainfall above 4,000 mm annually that constantly saturates the soil and turns the territory into an environment of high ecological and geotechnical fragility. This is a place where biodiversity completely redefines the act of projecting.
In contexts of high biodiversity, common practices such as extensive leveled platforms, massive earth movements or broad footprints are incompatible with the ecological logic of the site. Altering a drainage system can affect an estuary. Interrupting a biological corridor can modify fauna patterns. In Osa, the sum of small interventions generates significant cumulative impacts.
Awake assumes that biodiversity is not decorative. It is structural. For this reason, before defining form or program, the project begins from a detailed reading of the site: slopes and micro-topographies, basins and runoff, existing vegetation, solar orientation, wind patterns, biological corridors, present fauna and the trophic chain of the ecosystem.
One of the most determining moments of the project was the study of the biological corridors present on the property, at macro and micro scale. It was not a punctual analysis: it involved sustained monitoring on the terrain to understand the movement patterns of fauna over time.
Once those patterns were understood, the team identified which areas could be intervened in and which had to remain intact. In many cases, this meant reconsidering decisions already made and stepping back from areas that had initially been considered for the project. The result is concrete: Awake is placed in the pastures of the property, the areas where there is currently no active passage of biodiversity. It was not a decision of convenience, but the direct consequence of a rigorous process of listening to the territory.
The master plan as a habitable ecosystem
Awake is organized into four programs that coexist on that carefully read territory: a hotel conceived from the same principles that order the project, a retreat and wellness center, a residential complex of different typologies, and a program of community amenities that includes research, education, sports and services. All distributed with precision on the pastures, the only areas where monitoring determined that it was possible to intervene.
What articulates and gives meaning to all these uses is a single element: the Biological Tower.
If there is one element that synthesizes the intention of Awake, it is the Biological Tower. It is not a lookout point, nor an isolated symbolic gesture. It is an educational, scientific and experiential infrastructure that translates the functioning of the ecosystem into spatial experience and articulates the complete meaning of the master plan.
The Tower makes it possible to understand the forest not from a horizontal plane, but as a stratified and living system. Its vertical organization responds to the different strata of the tropical forest, turning each level into a thematic space of learning and contemplation. From the base, the visitor explores the life of the soil: water filtration, natural regeneration processes and terrestrial fauna. As they ascend, they access the middle stratum — the transition zone where the greatest interaction between species occurs and where the resilience of the forest is built. Higher up, the canopy level opens: photosynthesis, the life of monkeys, birds and arboreal mammals. At the highest point, the gaze extends toward the sky — lunar cycles, bird migration, constellations — and the visitor understands that the local ecosystem is linked to global systems.
The Tower functions simultaneously as a non-invasive scientific monitoring platform, environmental interpretation center and infrastructure for educational programs. It is a shared space between the hotel, the residences and the community it does not belong to any program in particular, but to all at once. It is the element that makes the intention of the project visible: not to occupy the territory. To learn to read it.
Being part of a living territory
Beyond technical criteria, Awake builds a spatial experience deeply linked to biodiversity. The humidity of the air, the constant sound of insects and birds, the intensity of the green, the rain on the roof: all these elements are part of the architectural experience.
The views are framed to observe without invading. The spaces open to allow natural ventilation. The transitions between interior and exterior are diluted. Here, inhabiting should not break the balance.