TODAY COSTA RICA — On what was once Francisco Montealegre’s coffee plantation, shaded by yos trees native to tropical places like Costa Rica, which produce a white, plentiful sap that was once used for bird hunting—a tradition that’s now discouraged, a new urban vision was born in the 1940s.
After Montealegre’s death in 1942, his heirs decided to develop the property. In 1948, Enrique Maroto Montejo, a young Costa Rican architect trained at the University of Illinois and influenced by the Chicago School and Frank Lloyd Wright, returned to the country with a dream: to design modern, functional architecture adapted to the tropics.
Together with architects such as Rodrigo Masís Dibiasi, Edgar Vargas, Jorge Borbón Zeller, and Carlos and Jorge Escalante, they shaped Los Yoses.
More than a neighborhood, Los Yoses was the starting point for modern architecture in Costa Rica.
From Facebook page Amantes de Casas Antiguas CR