Iconic architect Ronald Zurcher Gurdian’s groundbreaking organic style brings a naturalist approach to design that is changing modern to architecture
Once pushed toward law school by his father, Ronald Zurcher Gurdian is now one of the world’s most recognized and successful architects, specializing in the paradises of Latin America and the Caribbean. With more than one million square meters of projects in more than 15 countries, from Mexico to Trinidad to Argentina, his work and influence are far reaching. Zurcher Architectos gained widespread fame after completing the Four Seasons Peninsula Papagayo project in northwest Costa Rica to great international applause. Passionate yet content and easy to talk to, Zurcher has been featured repeatedly in Conde Naste publications for his revolutionary work in Costa Rica and for his influence in a movement away from ostentatious self-aggrandizing buildings toward those that work with the culture, natural history, and flow of the landscape. A trademark of his projects is that they are often difficult to see at a distance.
His personal and localized approach to architecture-no matter where he is working-has been a sensation for years now and has changed the method and approach of many contemporary architects who are influenced by his super-organic style. For he is a naturalist and artist first, a man who works 14 hour days driven not by money or fame but by an unwavering love for what he does, and this is what he attributes his success to-while still reserving at least two hours a day for exercise, family and pursuing his equestrian passions. If you see him, he is likely to be doodling on a notepad, drawing shapes and textures, just as he did as a small boy in Costa Rica. Luxury Living International caught up with him on the phone recently in while he was in Costa Rica:
We hear much about your work, but tell us about yourself. Where exactly did you grow up, and how did you become an architect?
I was born in 1952, and grew up in a neighborhood in downtown San Jose. My mother is from Nicaragua, from Leon, a place with 16th century cobbled streets and very colonial architecture, so most of my holidays I spent there and I found it very interesting. I grew up in Barrio Amon (in San Jose, CR), one of the most traditional neighborhoods, but today mostly it is commercial buildings. I was greatly influenced by those places. I went to high school in Costa Rica. My father was a lawyer and wrote commercial code. I have a sister and two brothers, both lawyers, and I’m the youngest. My dad wanted me to be a lawyer, too. I went to school for it for one year and hated it, I wanted to study architecture, but there was no school in Costa Rica, so I visited my sister in Mexico and registered in the University of Mexico program against my father’s will. When my dad saw I did all that he said, “fine take your study…and then come back and continue with law.” I went to architectural school, loved it, and came back to Costa Rica but there was no work in those days, 1976, during the oil crisis. If you think this is a crisis today, those days were worse, in terms of nobody having work. Costa Rica was not in tourism yet, just agriculture, and oil affected the entire agricultural industry, the whole country. Construction went down and nobody built anything new, just small renovations. Consultant companies went broke…and I was opening an office against the current. We suffered a lot but those days made us very strong and last year was our 30th anniversary.
When did you realize architecture was for you? My mother was very creative and painted and carved, and when I was little I would collect creatures like snakes and scorpions because I wanted to study the surface and the shapes, the patterns of the skin or shape of a beetle and the lines in leaves. My mother was petrified initially but helped me and I used to draw all those forms and textures. I realized I wanted to do something related with visual arts. I thought architecture could be interesting, I love paintings and sculpture-and then I loved it, and grew very interested in the theme of creating forms and surfaces and colors and patterns.
Describe how your style evolved…
I started doing architecture in the Victorian style in Costa Rica and the colonial style in Nicaragua. I was looking for my cultural roots. Then I started a more contemporary style by studying the forms of all kinds of strange creatures…especially in the rural areas and by the beach I would study what is growing on a site, the leaves, insects, the trees, larvae and even little snakes. I started to produce architecture in those forms belonging to that specific site. When I do a project, that house or hotel cannot be anywhere else because the forms are found on that specific site and people appreciate it because they feel the site the belongs specifically there. On projects in Mexico when I first look at a site they are initially surprised to watch me. Of course I see the climate and the views, etc., but much of the time I am looking to the soil, picking up shells and sticks with my little bag and they see I develop these forms out of things from the site. Then they get excited and they bring their own little bag. The Four Seasons Papagayo was the first time I did that and often people are hesitant…but I did a lot of work on successful hotels and residential projects and developers would say “I’m not used to what you were doing but your last projects were so successful I’m going to let you do it,” and they close their eyes and trust in me, and now they are very happy with their projects. I was recently working a site for a hotel and residential component, and the client was hesitant but once he understood, he was happy and now he now says “look at this fungus, the layers in it!” And they are helping me collect these creatures and forms and are now part of my team and love the process.
That’s why your motto is in part “Not just to protect nature but inspired by nature in architecture.” Can you give me some other great examples? At Four Seasons the biggest inspiration was from a group of armadillos. There were many in the area, with their beautiful shells they walk in little groups and inspire me a lot, and when I had to do some big buildings there I broke them into little pieces and used several roofs for the same building so it looks like little armadilllos. Rounded texture and patterns similar to armadillos. For some other buildings close to the water I followed the turtle shape, shallower, less dramatic but round smooth and nice….and some of the roofs were inspired by cocoons and butterflies.
Does it always work? Do clients have reservations?
I had a project in Puerto Vallarta…I studied the culture, and the Indians that lived there believed the gods grow from the water instead of from the sky, so I picked up a lot of conch shells and said “I’d like to do something like this, work with these kind of shells and forms and use the water and the shapes of lobster” and the people thought I was going to recreate Disneyland. They were very worried and said “we’re thinking more of something along lighter lines, less complications…” but they had not seen my designs, so I started making drawings that day and at night I came with a bag of shells and they said “this isn’t what we had in mind but we are loving what you are showing” and they now love it. But at first they thought I was creating a theme park. But I take the essence only, it doesn’t look like a giant lobster…it’s very subtle.
How big is Zurcher now, is it growing still, and what are your goals with the company? Do you still do lead design on each project?
Most of the initial stuff I do and then I follow up what I started. I have a partner for five years now, so we work a lot together and discuss concepts and bring in other architects. It’s a collective work. The company was growing every year but last year we had to reduce personnel and now it’s 100 people. We have moved some people to our Panama offices. There’s still good work there and projects for the Caribbean we do from there…I spend a lot of time in Panama. We do interior design and landscaping, too. We were a lot bigger and I was very happy doing projects in all Central America and the Caribbean but I’m happier now that we are smaller. We have projects from Trinidad Tobago to Dominican Republic and Argentina, many places. I really enjoy the designs more now and the people are more relaxed…before it was produce-produce-produce and we wanted more time to enjoy the process and now we are doing that, and still have all the work and it is great. I always wanted to design a theater, and we are doing that now here in Costa Rica, using raw wood and bamboo, a really nice form, studying the acoustics, studying bamboo and all the connections. We’re investigating, and it’s very interesting and fun. We also wanted to do a museum/art gallery and we’re doing it, so I’m very happy with those things. And after 30 years of experience people have the confidence in our company so that we if we come out with new ideas they say “this is unusual” but we have the track record so they are comfortable with us.
Your big breakthroughs?
Two moments. One, when I designed the Costa Rica Marriott in San Jose, a 25-room hotel. Before that my projects were only 1,000 square meters and the Marrriot is 25,000. Initially the operator wanted a more compact building but the developer allowed me to design it more detached and I was inspired by the coffee plantations. The site had been a plantation, a beautiful site with the courtyards, all that…but the operator wanted something more efficient while we wanted something with more layers and arch sequences. Once we built it it was beautiful, it was 15 years ago and it’s still a very nice building, it ages very well, like a good bottle of wine. That was our first big project for an international company, and they asked us to do another, then they started calling us for all their projects in Central America to Dominican Republic and the Caribbean. We have a good relationship with Marriott. Then we did Four Seasons a few years later and it was another breakthrough. The Four Seasons was 50,000 square meters and in a very fragile area, the erosion and such made it so sensitive, a very fragile piece of the country, and we came out with these forms and new designs…another breakthrough that opened a lot of doors for that kind of range of quality for hotels. So we have been approached by owners who want to do St. Regis, Rosewood, a lot of high-end companies like Ritz Carlton, and it’s because of Four Seasons.
Your greatest challenge with the Four Seasons? And what are some of your favorite touches there? Two big challenges. First, how to build 50,000 square meters in a very fragile area; and how to do it and not look like a massive building- how to break it in pieces. How to work with colors and shapes that would not be intrusive in this delicate part of the Peninsula. The other big challenge was to work with so many consultants in so many parts of the world and having to coordinate the consultants from here in Costa Rica. The number one challenge was how to build 50,000 square meters so that when you are in a boat offshore out in front of it and you don’t realize there’s a big project in there. We have achieved that. You can hardly see it and you see the forms there and they belong there. The founder and president of Four Seasons is an architect, Isadore Sharp. And he came to me at end of construction and he said “Ronald this project looks like it was carved from the mountain.”
Luxury Living International editors have been visiting there for years. Amazing place. What was the world’s reaction to your designs there? Of what designs are you most proud? It was very positive and that was the second big breakthrough. The Four Seasons is one I am proud of, but I’m very proud of many smaller projects like the museum.
What is the single most important thing that has made you so successful? I think it is because I love what I do. At any spare moment I have I look for a piece of paper or chalk or pencil and I start drawing, sometimes just creating forms, imaginary forms, and spaces. I love to go to the doctor because you have to turn off yourself there and wait a lot of time for the doctor or dentist to take care of you. I love it-it’s my own time, nobody can call me…I go there and it’s my hideaway place to start drawing.
I see the traditional Spanish colonial flavor is now absent from much of your work, like Four Seasons Peninsula Papagayo. To be honest sometimes I feel I would be happy to never see another red tile roof…and it seems your projects mostly avoid it now too…why is that and what are your feelings on this? I did some of it, Reserva Conchal, Costa Marriot, the JW in Pinillla…but I want it to reflect the culture of any place I design. In Mexico I want to reflect their culture, climate and history, so I look into the historical roots and try to go one step further and implement contemporary concepts but still within the colonial vocabulary. I did that initially and realized that with colonial architecture, even though it is so different in Columbia and Mexico, it was still coming from Spain, not our actual roots, and I decided I actually want to design with the specific roots of Latin America, whether it’s on an island in the Galapagos or in Argentina or Mexico…I want to reflect the fauna and flora and culture that is happening there…it belongs to us. So I started studying pre-Columbian people and people of the local regions. It’s not that I’m going to reproduce the same pre-Columbian forms, but rather things that belong there, not inherited from Europe. Also, normally if a project is successful you have a lot of followers and that makes you proud but you have good followers and bad followers and there are many bad examples of that, and they destroy the mystery of it. I wanted to get away from that.
What is a day in your life like? I fly and travel a lot, normally I do 14 hours of work a day, and two hours of exercise. Sometimes it’s the gym, sometimes horseback riding or playing polo, hours with my family. I love anything to do with horses, dressage, show jumping, polo…and just riding, I love to do that with my family, going to beach-we ride almost every day, out of Santa Ana, San Jose, the stables are there. Mentally you take a horse and go up into the mountains just riding, it’s fantastic. My other passion is appreciation for art. I organize and sponsor a group of friends and we do the biannual visual arts contest in Central America and Costa Rica. I’m very close to a lot of the arts, I constantly go to cutting-edge exhibitions. Architecture is one of the arts.
Prieta Beach Club at Papagayo is just beautiful, tell me about it?
At Prieta, I wanted to create a very local building close to the beach. I don’t want it to compete with nature or the beach and there are very few areas where we have the building highlighted, it’s kind of rounded, and under beautiful trees, so the roof is like big giant leaves like the canopy of a giant tree. The way it is structured is like when you hold a leaf, and the leaf cantilevers out from the stem. We used the same principal and water is collected on the stem. We created a lounge with the same structure and forms and light and shadows of the canopy of a tree.
Do you think people will ever request “Costa Rican-style-architecture” the way they do Balinese or Spanish colonial? Is it a primary focus for you? How would you characterize the strongest elements of Costa Rican architecture, and have you carried that abroad?
I hope so. I am starting to see people using the same materials, colors…when I go to a place I study the soil and take bark from trees and I send them to a lab so they can then replicate the color of soils and leaves and use those colors to camouflage the buildings of the places they create. People are starting to do that and I am very flattered. People are recognizing it is a good way to do architecture. Contemporary architecture can be very warm: People say they like historical because it is more cozy and I do not agree. The contemporary styles can use warm materials so it doesn’t have to be cold and impersonal. What I really try to avoid is a building…I would hate if a building I design could be transported to another country and still belong there. I want it to reflect one specific site and so it would look odd if transported to another place. It has to be part of the culture.
