"We began to evaluate the house as an image," Garita said, "and we began to think about these two colored volumes suspended over a translucent volume, sort of like a Mondrian painting, and the abstract connotations of that."

And so the house became two seemingly floating volumes hovering over the translucent ground floor.

"The orientation of the house and the distribution of its parts enables the suspension of the body in different points in space," Haritos said.

Then it was done, and the two men brought their design back to the client. The gamble had worked.

"I think he understood many of the issues that we were presenting," Garita said. "He was very excited about it, but he was afraid of it, too. But for him, the house became an act of faith. So he said, ‘Let’s build it and see how it looks.’ He became very excited, and he and his family are very happy with it, though of course there are always little complaints."

Garita has his own complaint: he wishes he had moved to Costa Rica for the construction process, to facilitate communication with contractors. Still, the project came in under budget, and the architects are proud.

"This was my first project as an independent," Garita said. "I think the fact that I was naïve about how to deal with a client partially allowed this to happen. I almost didn’t care if I lost the client, and I don’t know that I would be as daring now. But I’m so glad that this was able to take place in the way that it was able to take place, for the client to close his eyes and let us do it. It was a rare experience."