Hospitality Design - May 2015 - 170

perspectives

places nicaragua

uncommon to find a pine tree growing through
the modern bathroom. The Rancho acts as a
community hub for meals, and an expansive
wood deck doubles as an open-air yoga studio
and lounge area overlooking the forest canopy
down to the Pacific.

Maderas Village

Neighboring Maderas Village, a creative
community 50 yards up the road, brings a
familiar yet exotic take on surf, yoga, and
spa with the intent of creative collaboration.
Founders Matt Dickinson, Dave Grossman, and
Anthony Hermans sketched the village by hand
with plans formalized by Studio Red Architects
of Dublin. The cabanas, casitas, and cottages use
naturally felled trees and plantation wood from
autonomous regions of Nicaragua. Front walls of
the cabanas are sliding screen doors that create
"an ultimate tree fort while still maintaining a
sense of comfortable luxury," Dickinson says.
Intentionally not rising above the tree canopy,
which would disrupt the natural "bridges" for
howler monkeys and other wildlife, cabanas
and casitas blend into the hillside, following the
natural ebb and flow of the topography.
Finding reliable power here was a challenge
as well, so they brought it in themselves, while
a greywater septic system produces between
400 and 650 gallons of recycled water a day
through a complex filtration system. "This helps
keep the village green year-round and ensures
water that is extracted through our wells gets
deposited back into the Maderas water table,"
says Dickinson.
He and Grossman also established Maderas
Collective, a 12,000-square-foot design studio
and workshop in Managua that is creating
and renovating new structures and interiors
for the community. Early this year, a second
construction phase brought an 1,100-square-foot
open-air yoga studio along with a sophisticated
recording studio and musicians' lounge. The
modern structure also incorporates fallen
Nicaraguan wood but has floor-to-ceiling
accordion glass doors that open to expansive
views of the valley and Pacific Ocean.
Workshops at the yoga studio support a
greenhouse project "built for the people, by the
people, through the people, led by Tim Gibb,"
of nonprofit organization Namlo International,
explains Maderas Village's founding partner
and director of health and restoration Michael
Chmielewski. "The goal is to change the
poverty paradigm for local families by replacing
previously purchased goods of low nutritional
value with organic vegetables." Plans are in the
works to create an additional organic farm to
supply Maderas Village and to teach the local

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May 2015 hospitalitydesign.com

2. Buena Vista Surf
Club's six freestanding
treehouses are made
from Nicaraguan wood,
palm fawn, and stone.
3. Many of the
furnishings in the Tribal
Hotel's guestrooms were
handcrafted by local
artisans.

4
community sustainable farming with organic
practices.

Hotel Alcazar

Down the hill in San Juan del Sur, Hotel Alcazar
is the first official boutique property to open
in the popular surf town. Local architect Eric
Gabriel partnered with Chicago real estate
developer Roger Wolff to renovate a vacant motel
into the seven-suite property. Wood accent beams,
exterior doors, and furniture are sourced from a
local forestry company specializing in reclaimed
Nicaraguan wood, and using the original colonial
structure, Gabriel and his team mixed exoticchic and contemporary interiors with authentic
building elements such as natural stone façades
and tile bathrooms. "Restoring an existing
structure is a lot more challenging than starting
with a blank canvas," Gabriel says, "but we
managed to strip the old motel down to the bare
minimum and give it our own ideas and feel."

4. Bright tiles-informed
by the elements of
nature-decorate a
guest bathroom at the
Inn at Rancho Santana.

Inn at Rancho Santana

With onsite facilities for milling wood and
forging iron, and nearby villagers adept at both
brickmaking and pottery, San Diego-based
Altevers Associates didn't have to look far to
instill the 17-room, two-story Inn at Rancho
Santana with a distinct sense of place. While
designing the inn, which features a courtyard,
art gallery, and café and is situated on a larger
resort property that occupies almost 3,000 acres
along the southwest Pacific Coast, principal
Aimee Altevers ordered that everything
from iron shower rods and sconces to locally
sourced oak furniture be made at the property's
workshops. She was further inspired by nature's
four elements-water, earth, fire, and air-in
choosing the tiles and textiles that inform the
different guestroom schemes. "I was trying
to combine that sense of the rustic arts of the
villages with the untouched beauty of the
beaches at the resort," she says. "It made for a
great contrast." hd

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