Ocotal is a tourism development on the Papagayo Gulf in Guanacaste, set on a property of varied topography with views across the Pacific and into the surrounding dry forest. The masterplan distributes hotels, guest buildings, and recreational facilities along sinuous roads that follow the terrain, with residential parcels woven between them.

The tip of the bay is held by the main recreation and community building, which emerges from a large stone plinth — active programs housed within the base, contemplation and gathering above. The plinth resolves the topography and anchors the building to the hillside while opening a 270-degree panorama over the water. Above it, a linear plan with perimeter circulation under generous overhangs creates a continuous interior space where distinct areas are defined by the rhythm of interconnected timber roofs rather than by walls. The formal composition balances three elements — lightweight roof structure, stone base, and rendered volumes — the last of which, explored in early design as dramatic cantilevers breaking the main geometry, settle into the primary structure as sculptural counterpoints, most legibly in the domed entry vestibule.

Descending the hillside, private guest buildings step repetitively into the terrain — square in plan, with truncated pyramidal roofs that emerge among the dry forest trees.

Along the beach, the plan proposed a long, zigzagging hotel whose geometry doubled in the roofline and whose inflection points created large triangular courtyards opening toward Ocotal’s black sand beach. This portion was not built, but it represents the project’s most explicit use of field geometry as a landscape-responsive planning tool.