Sendero Villas: what boutique hotel design looks like when the site leads
Playa Guiones is one of those rare places where the natural environment still sets the terms. World-class surf, a lush tropical climate, and a deeply rooted conservation culture have shaped not just the landscape but the community that lives within it. The rhythm here belongs to the land. Sendero Villas begins from that premise.
Sendero Villas: lobby
What the site required
Completed in 2024 in Guiones, Guanacaste, Sendero Villas is a boutique hotel development of 1,314 m² designed by LOOP Design Studio. The design challenge was specific: seven villas on a narrow, deep lot, a typology that easily becomes repetitive, compressed, or simply indifferent to where it stands.
The villas are organized around a single idea: the path. Not a corridor, not an access route. A living spine. A winding green passage that runs the length of the site, filtering light through dense tropical vegetation, dissolving the boundary between interior and exterior as guests move through it.
Each of the seven villas is its own piece. The design resists repetition, not as a formal gesture, but because the place demands it. Privacy and connection to the Nosara community meet in a balance that doesn't announce itself.
From above
The living spine
What good design means here
At Sendero Villas, that means material choices suited to the local climate, spatial clarity that earns its openness through structure rather than gesture, and an interior language. Developed in collaboration with Cola Blanca Studio and DAAS Light, that extends the logic of the site rather than contradicting it.
Every element was chosen for its ability to age well, for its tactile origins, and for the environmental logic it carries. Reclaimed roof tiles bring historical character and thermal mass. Recycled brick walls offer a raw, honest texture that reads differently as the light shifts through the day. Natural stone floors anchor the interiors in the same geology as the landscape outside.
The project was published on ArchDaily in June 2026, selected as a Featured Project in the Hospitality category.
On working in Costa Rica
Sendero Villas is one example of how we approach boutique hotel design in tropical environments: starting with the site, building with what the place actually requires, and designing spaces that are purposeful rather than performative.
If the site still has open questions, that's exactly when the conversation is most useful. Reach out!
