Catalogue 22/Casa Kike Analysis

Part of Catalogue 22, Catalogue 22 on Google Maps

Designer: Megan Beange
Degree: B. Architecture
School: Carleton University
Year: 2009
Location of Project: Costa Rica
Project Status: Built

The house analysis project was intended to help the student understand the depth of conceptual thinking that is invested in a professional work. Each student was given a project to research and evaluated based on the success with which they analyzed the concepts and ideas inherent in the work. Categories analyzed include form, space, structure, landscape + site, location + culture, client-architect relations etc. Casa Kike was built by an Architect for his father (a famous author) on the coastline of Costa Rica. By coupling indigenous timber techniques with modern building technologies, this double pavilion is made a fully functioning work space for the author. The floor plan takes its shape from the triangulation of trees existing on the site. Further more, only local trees were cut and milled for this project. The library itself is representative of the three life-stages of a tree for an author; those alive right outside the louvered glazing, those dead and assembled into structure, and those reborn into the pages of written word. The plan also speaks to the tension between the larger pavilion and the smaller, and of the tension between father and son, architect and client.