Casa Leiva
Located within the residential community of Valle del Sol in Santa Ana, Casa Leiva is a two-story family home organized around a central atrium. Quietly contained toward the street and openly oriented toward its interior, the house reinterprets the Costa Rican patio typology with a contemporary sensibility, presenting a composition of beige stucco volumes, wood-clad accents, and a cantilevered upper mass that frames the entry and carport.
At the heart of the plan, a double-height atrium structures the entire house: within it, the family room appears to float as a suspended volume, while a slender bridge on the upper level connects the two wings of bedrooms across the void. The ground floor — kitchen, dining, and living areas — opens generously onto the rear garden and pool, extended by covered terraces and pergola-shaded timber decks that dissolve the boundary between interior and exterior and anchor the daily life of the house around water and landscape.
Materially, the project negotiates between vernacular and modern construction. Traditional clay-tile roofs coexist with steel-framed pergolas, polycarbonate canopies, and full-height glazing, while crisp wood-clad volumes punctuate the stucco envelope and a translucent glass panel signals the lighter register of the upper floor, completing a house that is at once grounded, familial, and unmistakably contemporary.
