Conjunto Hatillo

Overview

In the mid twentieth century Hatillo was the great housing experiment of the Costa Rican government, a satellite city south of San José that for decades served as a laboratory for public housing projects. Conjunto Hatillo takes up that legacy on the only two plots available in the area, a triangular site on the ring road and a slope toward the María Aguilar river.

The proposal is mixed use, with 1,000 middle class homes, the Centro de las Artes de Hatillo, shops and restaurants, office buildings, an institutional building, parks and a cemetery. It is conceived as vertical neighborhoods, inspired by the variety of Latin American barrios, that respond to the need for a compact, mixed city.

San José needs densification with identity. Conjunto Hatillo proposes that this growth take place where the city already has history, infrastructure and community.