Monday, July 19, 2010
It Begins...
Welcome to the beginning of a beautifully unrestricted conversation on the topic of design for the purposes of collaborative brainstorming. Warranting this medium is an idea for an environmentally conscious tourism resort located in the lush mountains of Costa Rica. This location will attempt to educate and enlighten its guests as to pre-existing as well as novel symbiotic relationships between ourselves and our local surroundings. These relationships will be highlighted in a manner lying properly between passive subtlety and aggressive proselytization allowing guests to experience the comforts, beauty, and ultimate luxury that can be experienced with diminished cost to our environment and hopefully a balanced mutual benefit.
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As background information what are some of the existing successes and disappointments of Costa Rica's tourism? I'm sure I'll get your pint of view soon enough, but I'm looking to see or hear from the Costa Ric-an point of view
ReplyDeleteHi Mathew and Dan.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to collaborating with both of you on my project in Costa Rica named "Finca Monte Galan (con loco tico) or "Finca Galan" for short. The literal translation is "Handsome Mountain Farm (with the crazy local)". Of course there is a long story behind the name but I will save that for another time.
Finca Galan is an 80 acre hillside farm located in the mountains of west central Costa Rica near Carara National Park. The nearest services (fuel, markets, etc) are over an hour's drive by gravel roads. 4-wheel drive vehicles are a must as two rivers without bridges must be crossed. The property is remote in many other respects.
The nearest utility line is over one mile away and in any event alternative energy sources are contemplated (wind, hydro, solar, dio-diesel).
Finca Galan seeks to grow as much food as possible on the farm and otherwise source food from as near to the property as possbile. Additionally, a bio-diesel experiment is currently underway with the planting of over two acres of tempate trees. The oil from tempate seeds will be used to create dio-diesel.
Similarly construction activities seek to use local materials and/or recycled products (for example terra cotta roof tiles will actually be recycled plastic bags) and local laborers.
To date improvements to Finca Galan include a graveled main access road, driveways, cleared areas, numerous fruit and ornamental plantings, walking trails, a caretakers home, and a newly constructed 3 bedroom 2 bath bungalow.
Finca Galan is owned by a corporation called Inversiones ISHI S.A. The two principal stockholders are David M. Dion who owns a real estate and development company in Vermont, (www.davidmdion.com) and Fabio Salas who owns a travel tour operator business in San Jose, Costa Rica (www.costaricareps.com).
The partners seek to combine experience in the real estate development and conservation based planning arena with Costa Rica's rapidly burgeoning eco-tourism business.
My goal is to engage Mathew's assistance in furthering the overall thematic design for Finca Galan based on traditional rural Costa Rican architecture, and otherwise fine tune the master plan. The project vision is to create permaculture food systems, alternative energy systems, and tasteful yet enduring soft footprint shelter systems catering to the middle and upper middle class eco-tourism market . These goals are all intended as a direct response to the earth's post peak oil age of consequence.
More later...
Dan, I will pass your question on to my Costa Rican Partner.
ReplyDeleteHola David,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your email. Yes, I recall you had mentioned about the thesis that your nephew and the possibility to base it on Galan Project.
Regarding the background information on existing successes and disappointments of Costa Rica’s Tourism, I would say that the existing success points are:
- Solid base of areas protected under various conservation regimes (National Parks, Private Reserves, Biological Reserves, Wildlife Sanctuaries and protected areas owned by various conservation organisations)
- Diligent workforce and hospitable culture towards tourism
- High level of education and English proficiency
- Geographical proximity to U.S. and Canada; which makes it an exotic destinations within 3-5 hours flyaway from most U.S. cities.
- Small-business based industry. One of the primary characteristics of Costa Rica's tourist industry development is that it started as a small family business industry that employees dozens of families for each traveller that visits Costa Rica. This as opposed to all-inclusive and mass tourism destinations where the same company that owns the planes or charters them, is the same company that own or controls the hotels, transport and restaurants within each complex.
Amongst the disappointments or opportunity areas where I think Costa Rica need to focus its efforts and resources to maintain itself as one of the leading eco-destination in Latin America are:
- Road infrastructure needs complete overhaul from sign posting to repairing the main roads that link the most popular destinations.
- Need of modern and larger centrally located airport located in an area with more estable weather conditions (e.g. Central Pacific zone)
- Work more on customer service training, whilst the existing standards are acceptable, they can certainly be improved.
- In my personal opinion, there needs to be a stricter law that regulates the exponential growth that some areas are having. This could be similar to the municipal regulatory plans but more on a regional level so that touristic areas are sustainably developed causing as little impact as possible on the environment and landscape. All those huge mega-complexes in Guanacaste are a big turn-off for eco-travellers and are certainly contradictory to the whole image Costa Rica has been enjoying as a ecological heaven.
- Improve marketing efforts on the U.S. so that these are more consistent and target specific niches and cities.
I hope this helps!
Saludos,
Fabio
Fabio Salas
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail
Protejamos el planeta, imprima este correo solo si es necesario.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Costa Rica Reps DMC.
Specialist Tour Development & Destination Management
Tel: (506) 2520-0346 - Ext 101
Fax: (506) 2520-0323
Website: www.costaricareps.com
E-mail: fabio.salas@costaricareps.com
Mail Address: Apdo 13132 - CP 1000, San Jose, Costa Rica. C.A.
Registered Office: Casa # 2, Residencial Robledal. 125 mts Sur de Abonos Agro, La Uruca, San Jose.
It seems like there might be an issue with travel to the property. Dave, you have told me adventure stories about the ride in. Is this the kind of adventure that guests will likely experience or will there be a new infrastructure?
ReplyDeleteAs a part of the trip to la finca monte galan, is there one specific community that will serve as a base for supplies and/or accomodations?
ReplyDeleteGetting there is half the fun! This statement rings very true relative to getting to Finca Galan. The Costa Rican government has proposed a paved road to within about one mile of the project. Personally, I do not want a paved road becuase it will take away from the feeling of being in a remote place. The paved road could be installed in five years or twenty years or one hundred years. It is impossible to predict given the way the Costa Rican Transportation Department operates.
ReplyDeleteThere are two cities (by Costa Rican standards) each located approximately 1.5 hours drive from Finca Galan. Puriscal is to the north east and Orotina is to the northwest. Each are reached by taking different a different road and the decision is largely driven by the quality of the road at any given point in time. Both cities have most of the supplies needed. San Jose is the capital of Costa Rica and is about three hours drive from Finca Galan.
ReplyDeleteWonderful comments. It's great to read about the passion for sustainability. As I try to influence San Diego here with sustainable architecture, there is the inevitable argument that any project adds to the carbon footprint.
ReplyDeleteMatthew you will find the same arguing against you during your first quarter, not necessarily against a greener environment, but more so to make more YOU believe in this project.
Eco-tourism is how you will bring people there; is this project to be indigenous, contrasting, or to influence others to do the same in others places around the world? If its the later, than "how" you design this with careful understanding not with just the materials listed in the previous comments, but also understanding the people, governments, religion will provide more passion for your thesis.
Great Start.
Thank you both for contributing.
ReplyDeleteOne of the major concerns that I have come across before plans are even developed deals with the evolution of the surrounding land and cultures in direct relation to Finca Galan. For instance, the local economies would surely be affected by the addition of an attraction (regardless of the size). Aside from building supplies and labor which will be required during construction, maintenance and ammenities must be accounted for during the duration of operation. A large portion of this will hopefully be diminished due to the on-site production of foods.
Is it possible to rely on Puriscal and Orotina for obtaining remaining necessities such as towels, soap, dishes, etc. as well as unexpected needs of tourists such as local art and other non-essentials?
While the adventure to the site remains exciting now, we need an estimated guess as to the projected travel and its effect on the roads. I would assume that the roads would become safer as they wear, while maintaining their charm. Should there be an alternate method of travel for those guests of more luxurious standards, ie. helicopter?
Bring on the Borgeouis as they are the ones with cash?
Keep it flowing.
I do not want to answer Dan's question from Dave's standpoint, but I think that this is important for the both of us to vocalize and eventually understand if not agree upon.
ReplyDeleteFrom my standpoint, I would have to say that this project has a combination of indigenous, contrasting, as well as influential factors.
In order:
The project will remain indigenous from the standpoint of construction as well as operation as to minimize environmental damage and propagate local systems.
The project will remain contrasting in its juxtaposition of Spanish Colonial themes against the local heritage which has been thoroughly influenced by that of Spanish culture, to say the least.
The project will remain influential in its fundamentally ecologically conscious foundation. This idea is hardly a new one and is based entirely on human responsibility and integrity as opposed to trendy fashionable marketing. It is this core understanding of cause and effect which has, does, and will always lead to broad success for the long term.
Above all, this project must remain responsible. When/if others choose to be influenced by this project, it will be based on sound reasoning rather than the trends of architectural fashion.
The next physical stage in this ever-evolving animal is a site visit. A site visit will provide me with the intimate sensory experience needed to custom design. One of the issues that I have been working on is how to obtain topographical information which would provide information pertaining to layout, views, utilities, and minimize impact on trees, water, wildlife. I have been conversing loosely with an EIT who has taken an interest in the project and could offer a considerable amount of help.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that the winter or spring is the best time for a site visit...
Greetings-
ReplyDeleteMy name is Kyle MacDonald and I am a civil engineer working in the SF Bay area, but find myself traveling all over the country for various projects. My company that I work for, CLE Engineering, specializes in coastal and waterfront projects, but we often find ourselves entangled in everything from land surveying to property assesments of multi-family dwellings. Matt approached me a few months ago about looking for advice on how to obtain topographical information of the project site to help him with his overall design. I told him immediatley that I am EXTREMELY interested in helping out. I love traveling. I love new things. And I love my job, so when I can combine all three its a no brainer.
Obtaining topographical info for the site is a bit tricky considering the location. Ideally what I would do is set up a GPS base station on top of a known elevation with a lat and long. From there I would take a "rover" (GPS mounted on a pole which talks to my base station) and walk around the project site tagging key features, changes in slope, etc. to produce a contour map. You can obviously also perform the work with a Total Station and a prism pole, but I imagine the location is quite thick and the more convential method would be extremely time consuming.
I think the best bet to obtain some basic topographical features of the land would be to consult with a local surveying company to see if you would be able to lease some of their equipment for a few days, and hope that they would be able to assist in providing some sort of control point out on the project site. No matter what happens with this project, you are going to want to have at least one, ideally two, control points on site with both vertical and horizontal control.
If anybody has any input or comments please feel free to share. I can be reached at kmacdonald@cleengineering.com