The prestigious A+ Award has been won by Czech architecture firm FormaFatal for a villa project in Costa Rica. Hosted annually by architecture website Archetizer, the A+ Awards are among the largest and most international in the industry, and are given to one Jury and Popular Choice Winner in each of 115 categories. Photo credit: BoysPlayNice.
Czech Rep., Aug 9 (BD) – Every year, the world’s leading online architecture platform Archetizer hosts the A+ Awards, one of the industry’s largest and most international award schemes. This year’s 8th edition was in the theme of “The Future of Architecture”, and received over 5,000 entries from over 100 countries. One of those entries was the “Art Villas Costa Rica” by the Czech architecture firm FormaFatal, which won the Popular Choice Award for the best large residential private house.
FormaFatal’s founder Dagmar Štěpánová said in an interview with Forbes.cz that she entered the competition because her project, Art Villas Costa Rica, was not based in the Czech Republic, which disqualified her from entering most domestic competitions: “So we thought we would try it in the world’s largest architectural competition.” And her attempt was successful: there were 194 winning entries in the 2020 A+ Awards, among which was FormaFatal’s Costa Rican project, which had also previously been featured on the website as “Project of the Day”.
Art Villas Costa Rica is described as a “hidden small resort” in the jungle above the Playa Hermosa beach near the town of Uvita, and consists of three unique villas and one multifunctional pavilion, scattered over a plot of two hectares. The owner’s goals for the project were to “create a place where the visitors merge with the surrounding nature, clearing their mind, experiencing luxury and adventure at the same time. He wanted to create a place that digs deep into everyone’s heart when they taste it.”
Though located abroad and influenced by the Central and South American atmosphere and color, the project retains some ties to its architect’s nationality, albeit not in the concept. For certain components, FormaFatal looked to the Czech Republic for suppliers and had some of them custom-made. One of the manufactures from their homeland was the renowned glass-making company Bomma, whose “Shibari lights” the firm has described as going “hand in hand with the overall tropical feel of the interiors.”
In the future, there may be more of FormaFatal’s work in Central America, as the firm is planning on building a new branch in Costa Rica, although construction has been disrupted by the coronavirus crisis, which was then followed by the rainy season. By the end of the year, however, construction should be able to get started, Štěpánová told Forbes. She added that she sees a lot of space for her work for the countries of Central America, “because the local contemporary architecture is still in its infancy. It reminds me a bit of the 1990s in the Czech Republic, there is a huge potential.”
