Design and Construction of Anamaya

By Geoffrey McCabe

I am frequently asked about the design and construction of Anamaya, so I thought it would be a good idea to write about that on our website.

We purchased the land that Anamaya is now built on in March of 2004. We built a small house after moving to Costa Rica in July, and that house is now one of our rental units, called “The Casita”. We loved that small house. It was designed and built by Rico Reolon, who would later build Anamaya. While living there, we designed the main house, later to be called Anamaya. I designed it with Rico’s help using free 3D design software called Sketch-Up, which is now a division of Google.

The house design caught the attention of the media and was featured on the front of the real estate section of the largest newspaper in Canada, The Globe and Mail, on Jan 13, 2005.

At the time, I wasn’t very familiar with green building, but we were interested in creating a structure that had good airflow, lots of natural light and shade, and was easy to keep clean. Before we had a house of our own in Costa Rica, we lived in a variety of wooden houses, and we saw how many bugs and ants lived in those types of houses, so we looked for a solution that would provide few natural spaces for any types of creepy-crawlies to live in, since we didn’t want to spray poison in the house to keep out the wildlife. Our solution was to use mostly concrete and finish the walls and floors with polished stucco. As a result, we have far fewer bugs living in the building and we don’t need to spray toxic chemicals where we, (and now our guests) live.

The construction was supposed to take eight months, but took twelve, and like most construction in Costa Rica, went far over budget, maxing out what we had available. During the construction process, we traveled to Bali, Indonesia, to buy many of the exotic architectural features that are incorporated into the design, and much of the furniture. We also purchased “The Bali House” which is now the most popular room at Anamaya.

After we lived in the house for three years, we decided to turn it into a hotel and yoga retreat center. This time, we hired a local architect, Thomas Ruck, who has designed and built in the Montezuma and Malpais area of Costa Rica for more than ten years, and was trained in green building. We wanted to build without using any toxic chemicals at all, which is nearly impossible in Costa Rica (or anywhere in the modern world for that matter.) We researched the MSDS (Materials Safety Data Sheets) of all the materials we used and found varieties that were non toxic in nearly every case. For example, we researched several local wood glues that were available in the local hardware store and found that one of them was totally non-toxic (of course it was the most expensive one.) For wood stains and sealers, we imported many from Liberty Phoenix’s store in Florida: Indigo Green Store.