For two years following his relocation to San José from Los Angeles, architect Richard Hammond ran the same route through the southwestern foothills of Costa Rica’s capital two or three mornings a week. On a June day in 2015, something compelled the then design director at Gensler to try a different way home. He rounded a new corner and there it was: a for-sale sign that illuminated the future.

Hammond and his wife, Daniela, weren’t looking for a permanent residence. They imagined returning to the States or moving to South Africa, where Richard had grown up, within a few years. And if they were to stay on in Costa Rica, they assumed they would follow the example of most expats and build a weekend place on the Pacific, not a primary home 20 minutes outside San José.

Yet the Hammonds called the number listed on the sign. After all, embracing the unexpected is what drew the Zimbabwean-and German-born designers, who met in L.A. a decade before, to pursue the transfer to Costa Rica in the first place.

For Daniela, who’d left a senior architectural position behind in California and was raising the couple’s two girls and consulting from home, Richard’s discovery also represented a career opportunity.

“I had never really seen the moment to have my own practice until this project came along,” she says. “And having both daughters now in school freed up the time to go for it.”

The couple poked around the steep, north-facing half-acre that weekend, looked carefully at the two half-built structures on the site, and made an offer the next week. The characteristic unpredictability of the Costa Rican real estate industry compelled them to wait nine months before closing.

In the meantime, the family picnicked near the ridge on the parcel’s edge, as well as within the two buildings, and hiked to the stream at the bottom, ultimately teasing apart the property’s virtues.

Richard and Daniela used their observations from these forays as guidelines in their design, and Daniela took the lead on developing it. “The structures were in very good condition, so it felt more correct to shape them into something new rather than take them down,” Daniela says of the initial process.

The couple exchanged gables for flat planes accented by a clerestory and a green roof. Their design then expanded the smaller building toward the north and south and cantilevered a balcony over the front of the larger building’s north elevation.

In all, the home’s 2,900 square feet accommodates open-plan living and dining areas, three bedrooms, and a large studio. Instead of combining the two volumes into one house, the Hammonds joined them at the second floor with a bridge. They also sunk an entry courtyard into the hillside, which fills in the space to the rear.

From the courtyard, a mammoth sliding glass door with red framing outlines the semi-enclosed foyer, the connecting bridge just beyond it, and the valley beyond that. “We didn’t want just a glass box—we wanted something that would allow us to enjoy the views while feeling protected,” Richard says.

The reinvented home’s conjoined floor plan invites constant movement across the bridge or through the courtyard, and its various cutouts and projections reach toward sunlight and vistas. The airflow is similarly constant, and thanks to the extremely temperate high-altitude tropical climate, the house has no HVAC; a fireplace provides an occasional puff of heat. “Guests are confused about the boundaries here, what’s inside and what’s out,” Richard says of the overall effect.

As for the Hammonds, who have recommitted to living in Costa Rica, the house is more clarifying than Richard had originally hoped. He left his job at Gensler last April to join Daniela in full-time entrepreneurship, under the banner Inverse Project, and clients now come to their little wrinkle in the San José foothills to collect ideas for new collaborations.

“It has changed our perspective,” Daniela remarks with satisfaction. “We’re really inspired togo down our own path.”

Project Credits:

Architect: Inverse Project / @inverseproject

Builder: Tapezco

Structural Engineer: S3 Ingenieros / @s3_ingenieros

Cabinetry Designer: HDM

Photographer: Joe Schmelzer / @treasurbite

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A Random Detour Leads an Expat Couple to Discover Their Future Home in Costa Rica