FAMM Arquitectura and Sulkin Askenazi Build an Inward-Looking Retreat Around Trees and a Creek in Nosara

Most hotels on Costa Rica's Nicoya Peninsula are sold on a view: the ocean horizon, a jungle ridge, a sunset framed from the pool. Esh Hotel and Spa, completed in 2024 in Nosara, starts from a site that does not offer one. The plot slopes through rainforest, sits back from the beach and has limited long-distance sightlines. FAMM Arquitectura, led by Mariano Mesalles and Felipe Apéstegui, responded by turning the problem inward. Across 3,700 m² and 29 keys of suites and villas, the project builds its own landscape out of what was already there: mature trees, a natural creek and the ground itself.

Interiors by Mexico City studio Sulkin Askenazi push the same logic indoors, with a palette of greys, reclaimed local wood, indirect light and deliberately imperfect forms that the operators describe as somewhere between wabi-sabi and brutalism. We find that combination worth taking seriously. It could easily have become a styling exercise. Here it reads as a coherent position: if you cannot look out, make the inside worth looking at, and let shadow, texture and planting carry the experience a panorama usually would.

An Arrival Built from Walls, Posts and Fire

The entry sequence is compressed and deliberate. A gravel path runs between concrete walls and leaning timber posts, lit by torches and edged in stacked stone. Slanted struts and clay jars line a narrow passage, and a series of concrete portal frames pulls you toward the first built volumes through dense foliage. There is no grand reveal, because the site has none to give. The architects build anticipation through thresholds instead.

Fire is the reported organizing idea of the guest experience, and it appears early. A concrete fire pit anchors the reception, set in front of a timber desk with a preserved tree trunk standing in as a column. Another pit sits in a courtyard passage under raking light. These are simple objects, but they establish the hotel's center of gravity as a hearth rather than a horizon, which suits a place built to look inward.

Thatch Over the Pool

The main social pavilion pairs two systems that rarely share a frame. A heavy concrete portal opens onto a light timber-trussed structure under a palm-thatch roof, with daybeds lined along the pool edge. The concrete gives the threshold weight; the thatch gives the roof shade, breath and a regional familiarity that avoids pastiche because it is used as roofing, not decoration.

Pale plaster walls catch palm shadows through the day, and in low evening light the thatch turns gold. These are the moments where the internal landscape strategy pays off. The pool and its planted edges do the job a sea view would do elsewhere: they give you something to rest your eyes on, at a distance you can actually inhabit.

Lounge, Bar and Table Under One Roof

The lounge, bar and restaurant flow together beneath continuous thatch. A curved concrete bar counters the straight lines of the timber roof, and clay and patinated pendants hang low enough to pull each zone into its own pool of light. The restaurant, which serves Pacific Mexican cuisine, uses round wooden tables and cane chairs that keep the room light in both weight and tone.

A covered walkway with dining chairs on one side and daybeds on the other shows how loosely the program is drawn. Eating, lounging and circulating overlap under shade. In a hot, humid climate, this kind of open, roofed ground is arguably the most useful space a hotel can offer, and the project gives it generously.

Guest Blocks That Read Like Eroded Masses

The guest buildings are stepped plaster volumes with curved balconies, deep window recesses and stone stairs climbing between tall piers. Seen through bamboo and palms, they resemble something weathered more than something new. Vines trail from every ledge, and the planting is clearly part of the design intent: in time, the facades will become partly green surfaces.

What we appreciate is the restraint. The volumes are blocky and quiet, and the expression comes from depth: recessed openings, softened corners, shadows that shift through the day. On a slope, stacking and stepping the suites lets each one claim some privacy and a slice of canopy without competing for a view that does not exist.

Rooms Tuned to Shadow

Sulkin Askenazi's rooms are built around raised concrete and plaster platform beds, sunken seating areas and woven or rope pendant lamps. Concrete basins with black taps sit in the room rather than hidden in a bathroom, and sheer curtains filter tall windows that look straight into trees. The palette is mostly grey and earth, punctuated by an orange throw, an olive bedcover or a striped fringed textile.

The brushstroke and ink paintings above the beds are a smart choice. They echo the wabi-sabi reference without becoming literal. A carved black stone basin and a freestanding tub add weight to the bathrooms. The overall effect is calm and slightly austere, which suits a room meant for rest rather than spectacle.

Plunge Pools and a Yoga Room in the Trees

Private terraces with plunge pools look into dry forest, palms and banana leaves rather than out to sea. The yoga studio opens through sliding glass doors onto lawn and palms, so the wellness program borrows the same internal landscape as everything else. For an adults-only hotel built around a full-service spa, this consistency matters. The forest is the amenity.

Plans and Drawings

The site plans make the strategy legible: a central axis lined with small pavilions, a larger angled building, and a main pavilion that wraps a curving pool, all held within the tree canopy. The section through the long gabled pavilion shows its timber trusses and sunken pool set into the hillside, while the suite drawings show mirrored units with private plunge pools, lifted on concrete columns among dense planting.

Why This Project Matters

Esh Hotel and Spa is a useful counterexample to a hospitality model that treats the view as the product. Faced with a site that could not deliver one, FAMM Arquitectura kept the trees and creek, broke the program into small volumes and pavilions, and let courtyards, water and shade do the orienting. That is a transferable lesson for any developer looking at a second-tier plot and wondering whether it can compete.

The collaboration with Sulkin Askenazi also shows how interior and architectural intent can align rather than collide. Concrete, thatch, plaster and reclaimed wood share a single attitude about weight, texture and imperfection. The result is less a resort that frames nature and more one that sits inside it, and we think that is the more honest ambition for building in a rainforest.

Esh Hotel and Spa by FAMM Arquitectura (Mariano Mesalles and Felipe Apéstegui) with interior design by Sulkin Askenazi, Nosara, Costa Rica. Area: 3,700 m². Completed: 2024. Photography by Thibault Cartier.

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