Question: What is more luxurious than a view of the sea? Answer: A private view of the sea. This pool pavilion on the western coast of Quepos in Costa Rica achieves that level of luxury without imposing walls or gates. Instead, it builds toward it slowly and stealthily. Access to the view is not grand, just purposefully nondescript, offering a supremely unassuming gap in a wood-framed screen as an ambiguous point of entry. Once in, however, we discover it conceals a lush secret garden to the left. On the right, a translucent glass wall further delays the main event. As we come around it and enter into a living-dining room with a small kitchen and bath, we see a pool bordered on two sides by the concrete exterior walls of the pavilion, its watery ripples disappearing over an infinity edge that directs the eye, finally, to one’s own personal perspective on the seascape beyond.
Architect: John Beckmann