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They might not admit it, but some architects believe that architecture would be easier without the client. Though without the client there’s no one to pay for the work. So for those architects, the dream client would come in with a program, tell the architect to design something, and then just get out of the way.

That’s just what happened to Guillermo Garita and Arthur Haritos. Their client, an automobile importer and exporter, came to them with a program for a second home in Costa Rica. He needed an office for himself, a garage big enough to house several cars, and a few bedrooms. Garita and Haritos then made a modest proposal to the client.

"We proposed to him that we should present the project in one go," Garita said. "The gamble would be that if he accepted the design, it would be built. And if not, we would abandon it."

The client accepted their proposal.

Garita and Haritos then began the design process, which lasted about eight months of intensive work before they showed anything to the client again.

"The process was almost like a testing ground of how two architects could work together," Garita said. "Who would put the first line on paper?"

Haritos describes that collaborative process: "There was a series of small models. Each time an element was fashioned, there was an exhaustive dialogue before anything was settled. It was a dialogue that considered issues—some of them idiosyncratic, some of them more universal in nature."

The architects first addressed the siting of the house. It sits on a fairly large plot for its square footage, so the architects decided to divide the outdoors into three separate yards, opening the house up to its surroundings. Then, the pair began to address aesthetics.

"We began to evaluate the house as an image," Garita said, "and we began to think about these two colored volumes suspended over a translucent volume, sort of like a Mondrian painting, and the abstract connotations of that."

And so the house became two seemingly floating volumes hovering over the translucent ground floor.

"The orientation of the house and the distribution of its parts enables the suspension of the body in different points in space," Haritos said.

Then it was done, and the two men brought their design back to the client. The gamble had worked.

"I think he understood many of the issues that we were presenting," Garita said. "He was very excited about it, but he was afraid of it, too. But for him, the house became an act of faith. So he said, ‘Let’s build it and see how it looks.’ He became very excited, and he and his family are very happy with it, though of course there are always little complaints."

Garita has his own complaint: he wishes he had moved to Costa Rica for the construction process, to facilitate communication with contractors. Still, the project came in under budget, and the architects are proud.

"This was my first project as an independent," Garita said. "I think the fact that I was naïve about how to deal with a client partially allowed this to happen. I almost didn’t care if I lost the client, and I don’t know that I would be as daring now. But I’m so glad that this was able to take place in the way that it was able to take place, for the client to close his eyes and let us do it. It was a rare experience."

Kevin Lerner

Gross square footage:
4,000 sq. ft.

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