The Employee Solidarity Association of Costa Rica’s largest public bank needed more than a headquarters — they needed a shared roof for institutions with common values. The building in Llorente de Tibás sits on an irregular plot where every boundary tells a different story: a national highway to the east, a gentrifying commercial street to the north, a dispersed residential neighborhood to the south. The architecture answers each condition differently.

Bioclimatic demands complicated the geometry: maximum northern light was needed precisely where the plot is narrowest. The response was a system of precast concrete louvers that filters heat from the east and west while drawing diffuse northern light deep into the floor plates. Where the fourth and fifth floors cantilever over the entry plaza, the louvers give way to a concrete wall functioning as a full-story beam.

Entry happens through a covered plaza — carved from the building’s northeast corner — before the section compresses and then releases into a slender atrium at the center of mass of the irregular footprint. Low-iron, extra-clear glass lines every interior facade and void balustrade, pulling skylight into the working floors below.

The main volume breaks into horizontal two-story bands through cantilevered slabs that both shade the facades and serve as maintenance platforms, connecting the building’s scale to its urban context. Shared programs across all institutions occupy the top floor, ensuring that every employee reaches the building’s best views — and each other.