As architects worldwide grapple with rising energy costs and extreme weather events, a nearly decade-old project in Costa Rica offers increasingly relevant solutions. Benjamin Garcia Saxe’s Ocean Eye residence, completed in 2016 on Santa Teresa Beach, pioneered adaptive design strategies that feel more urgent and necessary today than ever before. The home’s movable walls, zero-energy cooling, and climate-responsive architecture provide a blueprint for the sustainable living solutions we desperately need now.
Designer: Garcia Saxe
Building between dense jungle and open ocean, the Holdener family property presented Garcia Saxe with a design challenge that mirrors today’s climate realities: creating comfortable living spaces that can adapt to extreme conditions without relying on energy-intensive systems. The architect’s response feels prophetic given our current sustainability crisis.
Movable Wall Systems That Anticipate Smart Home Needs
Garcia Saxe positioned movable wooden wall systems at the heart of Ocean Eye’s design philosophy, creating what we’d now recognize as analog smart home technology. These systems transform static architecture into dynamic, responsive living spaces. The walls aren’t simple sliding panels but full-height wooden screens that fold completely away, turning enclosed rooms into open pavilions.
When fully retracted, the main living spaces become continuous with the exterior terraces, creating a single flowing space from interior to pool deck. The transition becomes so seamless that interior stone flooring extends directly onto exterior decking, eliminating any threshold between inside and outside.
The dining area demonstrates this transformation perfectly. With walls closed, it functions as a protected interior space during storms. With walls opened, it becomes an outdoor pavilion where meals happen directly in nature, surrounded by jungle canopy above and ocean views beyond. This adaptive approach means residents configure their home based on weather, mood, and desired connection to the landscape.
Complete Transparency Creates Living Pavilions
The upper level showcases Ocean Eye’s most dramatic indoor-outdoor transformation. Floor-to-ceiling glazing combined with the movable wooden screens allows the entire upper pavilion to open on multiple sides simultaneously. The space becomes a covered outdoor room elevated in the treetops, with only the wooden ceiling providing shelter.
Strategic gaps in the wooden roof slats allow controlled natural light and ventilation while maintaining protection from rain. The result is interior spaces that breathe with the natural environment, where air circulation occurs through the building rather than around it. Even the bathroom embraces this philosophy, featuring concrete fixtures positioned to capture natural light and airflow while maintaining privacy through landscape screening.
Floating Pavilion Design Maximizes Views
Garcia Saxe elevated Ocean Eye above the landscape on slender steel columns, creating a floating pavilion that captures both jungle canopy and ocean horizon views. The two-story structure hovers lightly over the site, with the expansive wooden roof appearing to float independently above the living spaces below.
This elevated approach serves multiple climate functions beyond views. The raised position allows cooling breezes to flow underneath the structure while the dramatic roof overhang provides complete protection from tropical downpours. The infinity pool extends the horizontal plane of the lower terrace, creating a seamless transition between built and natural landscape.
The steel frame structure allows for complete transparency on all sides, with floor-to-ceiling glazing that can open entirely. This creates genuine indoor-outdoor living where the house becomes a covered outdoor space when weather permits, while maintaining the option to enclose completely during storms.
Passive Cooling System Eliminates Energy Dependency
Ocean Eye’s most prescient innovation lies in its completely passive cooling system. Garcia Saxe studied local wind patterns and thermal dynamics to design cross-ventilation that works with Costa Rica’s natural airflow patterns, eliminating mechanical air conditioning entirely.
Strategic gaps between floor levels create a stack effect, drawing hot air up and out while pulling cooler air through lower spaces. The floating “umbrella roof” serves multiple climate functions: shading terraces from intense tropical sun, channeling rainwater away from living spaces, and creating pressure differentials that enhance natural ventilation. The result is a home that stays comfortable year-round without consuming electricity for climate control.
This approach, innovative in 2016, now represents exactly the kind of energy-independent design that climate-conscious builders desperately seek. Garcia Saxe’s early adoption of passive cooling strategies offers a proven alternative to conventional building approaches.
Structural Resilience Meets Local Manufacturing
Garcia Saxe anchored Ocean Eye into the steep slope with concrete construction at the back that protects against falling branches and storm debris while creating a stable foundation. Moving toward the ocean, the structure transitions to lighter steel framing that provides flexibility for seismic activity and foundation settling.
The project’s remote location led to an on-site manufacturing approach that predates today’s sustainable building movement. Rather than trucking in pre-manufactured components, Garcia Saxe established workshops where local craftsmen created everything from kitchen sinks to bathroom fixtures using traditional techniques enhanced by modern design principles.
This approach yielded benefits that resonate strongly with current sustainability goals: reduced transportation impact, local employment, and custom solutions that perfectly match the home’s proportions. Local Melina wood created a regional supply chain that minimized carbon footprint while supporting the area’s economy. The on-site fabrication allowed real-time design adjustments, resulting in integrated details that mass manufacturing couldn’t achieve.
Traditional craftsmanship merged with contemporary design thinking produced solutions that feel increasingly relevant as builders seek alternatives to global supply chains and energy-intensive manufacturing.
Climate Adaptation Through Daily Living
The elevated terrace layout creates distinct activity zones connected by the external steel staircase that becomes an architectural feature itself. Upper level spaces nestle among the treetops for intimate morning coffee, while the expansive lower terrace opens completely to the infinity pool and distant ocean views for evening gatherings.
The pool deck extends as a seamless stone platform that visually continues the interior flooring outdoors, blurring boundaries between inside and outside living. The positioning captures cooling breezes from the ocean while maintaining privacy through strategic landscape screening.
From every level, the house frames specific views: jungle canopy from upper spaces, ocean horizon from lower areas, creating a curated relationship with the natural setting. The exterior stairs and terraces function as outdoor rooms themselves, demonstrating how circulation can become living space in tropical climates.
These spaces demonstrate how design can create privacy through landscape positioning rather than energy-consuming barriers. As extreme weather becomes more frequent and energy costs continue rising, Ocean Eye’s nearly decade-old innovations offer a compelling model for climate-responsive architecture. Garcia Saxe’s 2016 project proves that thoughtful design can create homes that are simultaneously more comfortable, more sustainable, and more adaptable to changing conditions than conventional construction approaches.
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