Rebequet Boquete

It is with great pleasure that I anticipate you something of this beautiful project in Boquete, Chiriqui. For those who do not know Boquete, it is a town located in the highlands of Chiriqui, surrounded by coffee plantations, rivers and mountains including the famous Baru volcano. Due to its high altitude, it has a privileged climate, which results in a lush and colorful vegetation like an eternal spring. Last year I visited this place with my family, walking incredible trails, surrounded by ferns of all kinds and huge trees. To our good fortune, we saw a Quetzal dancing and singing.

(@mosh.art)

It's not every day that great opportunities arrive at your door, but when they do, you have to take them with all the love and value they deserve. This project is great, not only because of the beautiful location; but also because it is a collaborative project with Panamanian architect Xiomara Armijo (Ekis Arquitectos), so by joining talents, the result will surely be successful. In addition, our client has a very pro-active vision towards Boquete and the project, wishing to rescue and highlight an identity that is being lost in the town at the architectural level, valuing “quality over quantity”.

SITE ANALYSIS

Currently, the Rebequet Hotel, the client's family business, is located on the property. It was designed and built by her father in the early eighties. It has nine rooms and a very nice internal courtyard, designed with arches in the perimeter corridor. The wooden ceiling and ornamental details make it very original.

Boquete is a very touristic area and over the years many hotels and hostels have appeared, making the market more competitive, consequently the hotel is difficult to maintain. The client looked to us for innovation in order to preserve her family business and update her property according to the current demand. Currently in town there is a large number of foreigners, mostly North Americans and Canadians. As well as a growing demand for apartments for people of different ages, either to buy or rent short or long term. An analysis of the site alternatives was carried out, evaluating standards and budget. The first option was to maintain the existing building, adapting the existing rooms to complete apartments (with kitchen, living room, etc.). The second option was to maintain the existing building and grow in height one more level, with the same principles as above. The third option was to demolish the existing building and build a new one with three levels. After discussing the options with the client and comparing several aspects, the decision was made to execute the third option.

CONTEXT

The village features old houses in a mountain style with gabled roofs, built with wood, terracotta floors, French windows and porches front. A beautiful and particular style that the client wants to rescue. Taking into consideration the goodness of Rebequet's original design, added to this beautiful and cozy architecture, we are designing the new project. It will consist of a three-story residential building. In total there will be thirteen apartments of different sizes. Most of them will be small, with one or two bedrooms, one bathroom, open kitchen and integrated laundry.

 

GROUND FLOOR

At street level there are two entrances. A main one from a garage door (necessary for Boquete's abundant rain), which will feature an inviting space to sit and wait or converse, with a backdrop of ivy climbing up the façade to the second level. Upon access, there is a small lobby, vertical circulation of stairs and elevator, where you can go up to the upper floors or enter with a view of a vertical self-supporting “green” element that breathes and anticipates the internal courtyard. Once you enter the semi-open corridor which is embraced by arches inspired by the existing internal courtyard at Rebequet, you can already visualize the internal courtyard, which will have even more greenery and beautiful flowers. In the center of the courtyard, a wooden deck and a small pool. Next to the patio, an open covered terrace with a long picnic table for barbecues. This space is adjacent to the outside circulation area and the parking lot, however a semi-open enclosure and a planter buffer the view and noise.

 

LEVEL 2 FLOOR

Both upper floors have five apartments, each with particular characteristics. All of them are accessed from the internal perimeter corridor that leads to the internal courtyard. All apartments have terraces and balconies with planters to enjoy the views of Boquete and the cool climate. On the second floor, there is a large communal terrace facing the main facade, as a second social area, enjoying the view.

LEVEL 3 FLOOR

EAST ELEVATION

WEST ELEVATION

SOUTH ELEVATION

CROSS SECTION 1

CROSS SECTION 2

LONGITUDINAL SECTION

Man Cave PTY

This week civil works begin for this apartment located in Punta Pacifica Panama. I share with you here the design process, which was a success thanks to a couple of collaborations. On the one hand, lighting design and on the other hand, first class 3D visualization (details below).

The distribution of the living room was the most complicated part, since due to its square configuration and the client's need to have the dining room with 8 seats near the kitchen, there was not much space to locate the living room. The idea of the living room is to be oriented towards the terrace and view, so that at the time of having a social meeting, these two spaces could interact. There is a television set but it is not a living room that is oriented towards it, it is a secondary element giving priority to the social aspect.

The apartment already had finished floors, kitchen and bathrooms. Therefore, the design focused on wall finishes, ceiling design and decoration of the entrance lobby, living room, terrace and bedroom. The style that was sought in this apartment was based on the client's requirements of having a modern and “cold” apartment. We took into account the existing finishes in the apartment to find other materials and colors that combine to create harmony to the environment.

This is a project with a tight budget, so before designing (with moodboard under my arm), I made a tour of furniture stores to see the availability of inexpensive furniture that met the desired requirements. At the time of making the renderings, there was already an idea of what was available in the market and the apartment was furnished accordingly.

On the terrace, the client wanted a classic bar. But because of the size of the terrace, I designed a “self serve” bar in the corner, with a long table with bar chairs to be able to see the view. The bar furniture has an iron structure in combination with teak wood and black marble.

This photo shows the beautiful view to the east and the Pacific Ocean.

The bedroom follows the same style as the living room, only using blue as an accent color. The room has a king size bed with bedside tables and a TV console in front of it. It also has a desk and a full length mirror leaning in the corner.

The renderings of this project were made by my friend, Volodymyr Slenzak. If you need high quality renders like these, you can contact me directly to put you in touch.

Carter House PTY

First post of this blog will be for Casa Carter, a 580m2 office located in Metrobank Tower in Punta Pacifica, Panama City. Already at this date the clients are in the middle of moving in and there are still some details to complete and be 100% happy with the result. I speak in plural because in this project I had the pleasure to collaborate with my friend Barbara Jaime, it was very efficient to work in collaboration and I hope it will be something repetitive in all projects of Arquídea, as the result is higher quality in every way.

For those who follow the account of Instagram, have seen the progress of this project from scratch. You can search the tag #casacarterpty to see how it is coming along. The purpose of this post is to make a brief memory of the project, in order to share the creative process and also to draw some conclusions. Each project is a manager of new ideas and new experiences that add up to improve every day, it is worthless that mistakes and errors are overlooked and in vain. As the Arquídea project is just starting, I have the passion to make good designs that are as conscious as possible with the environment and the available resources; to be able to do “more with less”.

This project was born January 2017. The clients found an office space that suited their needs, but urgently needed a “refresh”. The space had to be comfortable and comprehensive, including offices and also showroom to display many shoes and sneakers. In their requirements they had expectations of a comfortable and spacious office with a casual and modern look. We had to keep in mind that it would be a rented office and there was not a big budget, so we made a proposal based on this, plus our concept research.

In the search for low-budget materials, we found chipboard and construction materials as possible elements. Among those materials, our favorite was marine plywood, which has pine tops and raw-striped edges that look great on office furniture. It is an inexpensive material that doesn't need a lot of finishing to look good, and many of the furniture pieces were designed in this material with envelopes that were more touchable and handled with black plastic laminate (formica). We looked at different types of flooring that would not mean demolishing the existing floor and opted to use a high traffic vinyl floor that is installed in a tongue and groove fashion, which because it has no glue is easy to carry in view of a future move. In addition, we saw the opportunity to make our own installations that would not be expensive for the client but that would bring design and personality to the environment, in these installations we included colorful strings in the reception and offices, also lamps designed and manufactured by us.

The office program has a large showroom and offices to meet the program required by the client. The showroom is distributed with a generic display that can be adapted to any brand. The displays are configured to create semi-private spaces that accommodate the different brands and work areas. A chill out and console with beverage and coffee center was also included to serve customers.

The showroom displays were made with iron profiles bolted from floor to slab as an independent structure, between them horizontal and vertical pine profiles that support each other two-sided display boards and advertisements in two sizes. Slats and advertisements are bolted to the centers, which can be freely removed and adjusted.

The office layout went through several configurations until reaching the clients' favorite. The existing service areas were maintained, with minor modifications. The offices were distributed along the perimeters, leaving a central corridor with a large closet as a filing cabinet and a central space with a high work table with bar chairs. Different shades of gray were applied on the walls and slab, leaving the conference and management office with blue walls and slab. The small administrative offices were tiled in an opaque green, leaving touches of color in specific areas.

Several pieces of office furniture, made of plywood, were custom-designed. Some were coated in black plastic laminate and others tinted in colors (blue, gray and teal). Among the furniture are the closet in the main hallway, console as a side table in the conference room, self serve console in the chill out showroom, desks and work tables. All the furniture with doors has an openwork handle in the wood that, having two mirrored doors, adds design to the furniture. All the bases of the tables and buffet furniture are in 1″ matt black iron.

 

The project included installations made with 1/4″ colored elastic ropes. In the reception area the installation goes behind the reception furniture on the glass façade which is coated in frosted glass; so the design of the ropes varies as figure and background during day and night hours.

The lighting throughout the office is LED, mostly technical luminaires suspended from the exposed slab. Laser cut lamps were added as design elements in the showroom area and an installation of lamps over the open area in the center of the offices.

I will be updating this blog post as there is progress and more to show. To sum up, this project was successful because it met the expectations of the client and also of us as designers, however, there are always lessons to be learned to improve every day. Final reflections are pending once we celebrate the delivery of this project!

 

To be continued......

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