crucifixes and Victoriana. Before Johnson died in a
plane crash, in 1996, he and Wanzenberg explored a
shared taste for spartan, make-do living—a monas-
tic flip side to the excesses of ’80s party culture.
During the week, they would craft a wood-paneled
refuge stuffed w ith English antiques for Mick Jagger
on the Upper West Side (which later led to a remod-
eling of his villa on Mustique). On weekends, they
would escape to a pair of cottages on Fire Island’s
remote eastern tip.
After Johnson’s death, Wanzenberg began mak-
ing his own forays into decorating. Eventually he
became involved with landscape architect Peter
Kelly, and the couple took to poking around Central
America in search of a hideaway they could shape
together. In 2011, they chose Nosara, where Kelly’s
parents had once owned land, an area developed by
a group of Americans in the ’70s as a sort of subtrop-
ical version of California’s Sea Ranch. Its original
dwellings, including Casa de Mañana, were built on
former cattle farming tracts and in the lush jungle
hemmed in between the Nicoya hills and the coast.
While the spectacular diversity of wildlife con-
tinues to draw environmentalists and birders, more
recent arrivals to Nosara (the Omega Institute,
Burnt Toast Surf Camp) are beginning to make their
mark. “Everyone is in cahoots to keep it low-profile,”
says Fernando Santangelo, a New York interior
designer who transformed a former surf joint into
the Harmony Hotel for owners John S. Johnson, a
co-founder of BuzzFeed, and his wife, Susan Short.
Wanzenberg has consulted on the plan, which
includes a cluster of rental cabins.
Casa de Mañana, situated on a steep hillside,
evokes its own camplike vibe. Once you cross the
threshold you’re effectively in a tree house; the shut-
tered two-bedroom cottage is paneled top to bottom
in pochote, a common hardwood from a tree known
for its thorny trunk. Amid the palms and the mango
trees that coax hummingbirds, raccoonlike coati
and howler monkeys out of the forest, the dwell-
ing all but disappears into the rhythms nature has
established here.
Edwina von Gal, a New York landscape designer
and friend of Wanzenberg and Kelly’s, has dropped
in on her way to her own place in Panama. To her, the
house emanates a certain correctness common to all
of Wanzenberg’s work. “Alan’s got such good man-
ners,” she says. “And elements about him stem from
that. You don’t go overboard with architecture. You
don’t have to geegaw it up. When it’s well-behaved,
that’s enough. And it speaks for itself.”
Wanzenberg didn’t design Casa de Mañana
from scratch, but his imprint here is unmistak-
able. Over time, he’s fashioned a series of discreet
improvements: a barely there paneled kitchen, a
high-functioning utility room, a cedarwood master
bath. He is a big believer in daybeds to lower a room’s
center of gravity and energy level (the house has
four), Scandinavian modern furniture for its poetic
naturalism (Alvar Aalto shelving sits above his
desk) and handcrafted, unprepossessing art, like the
framed tribal embroideries (called mola) on display
in the living area, or some ink-and-crayon drawings
that traveled down in his backpack and are waiting
to be pushpinned to the walls.
As Wanzenberg tallies up the changes he’d like
to make, Kelly urges him to go slowly. Early vis-
its with their new neighbors confirmed what they
didn’t want—remote-control window shades and42
THE EXCHANGE
COAST STORY
From top left: Daybeds in
the living room; Wanzenberg
returning from the beach; a
cedar bathroom with local
tile; the veranda. Opposite,
from top: The carport; the
guest bedroom; a view of the
house from the gardens; the
beach below the house.late-model European appliances. Instead, they cul-
tivate a radical simplicity. The refrigerator, stocked
with Greek yogurt, coffee beans and Sauvignon
Blanc, is a workhorse, while a propane burner sits on
the countertop in place of a stove.
Most of the furniture has been crafted on-site
with Frank Hintz, their contractor, who suggested
Wanzenberg use Guanacaste wood, a native species
so revered that a government permit is required
to take down any old-growth trees. They sliced up
fallen trunks to make free-edge tables and seating—
part Charlotte Perriand, part Barney Rubble—that
lend the rooms a primitive elegance. “I find these
comfortable if you turn them so that the seat back
presses up against your stomach,” the architect
says of his lollipop-backed chairs. “But they’re
for a little butt—no question. To me, that’s part of
their charm.”
Santangelo admires the furniture and the moti-
vation behind it. “It is very appropriate,” he says.
“But Alan raised the level of craftsmanship—he was
keeping it simple but raising the level, directing the
woodworkers, showing people the possibilities.”
To lift the mood of the cigar-box interior,
Wanzenberg covered the daybeds with outdoor fab-
ric in multicolor stripes, choosing saturated hues
that would stand up to intense sunlight, and tiled the
showers in lemon and Aegean blue. Still, within a few
hours of sunrise the house falls into shade so deep
that shoes, books and entire tables are swallowed
up. By then, Wanzenberg is usually out paddleboard-
ing or running errands in the couple’s hiccuppy
Toyota Land Cruiser. As he sees it, Casa de Mañana
is the rejuvenating mother ship, “the station that
you come back to. You keep your things here, but it’sinteresting as a stepping stone to the garden, the
paths, the beach, the people, the social life.”
Buffering the mother ship are what the locals call
“angry plants,” cactus and other species armored
in spines to keep out unwelcome visitors. The
swordlike sansevieria lining the driveway predates
their arrival. “I laughed with our gardener—I’ve
got a snake plant that every college dorm room in
America has,” Wanzenberg says. “But I can’t rip it
out, because it’s everywhere! A design friend came
down and said, ‘Oh, that’s so chic. You know, Roberto
Burle Marx used it for his driveway.’”
When the couple flies down for a week or two,
Kelly devotes the first few days to fixing things; the
humidity does a number on anything with moving
parts. “In New England, you’ll have a light switch
for 100 years, it still goes on and off,” he says, but in
Nosara, “you come back and it’s broken.”
The locus for much of their activity is a concrete
terrace beneath the house shaded by structural col-
umns and open to the garden on three sides. A mud
pile when they found it, the space has since been
sculpted into a series of terraced planting beds,
and broad mesa-like platforms where seven-minute
workouts are a part of the vacation routine. A heap of
whale ribs hauled up from the beach is stacked, lyri-
cally, against a column.
“The couple that sold us the house used to
say to us, ‘Why do you do all these projects? We
used to go down and just sit there,’” Wanzenberg
says cheerfully.
If his efforts at Casa de Mañana have confirmed
anything, it’s that tomorrow belongs to those who
show up today. “The learning is endless,” he says.
“You just do a little bit and then evaluate.” WSJ. MAGAZINEDESIGNER DIGS“[THE HOUSE] IS A
STEPPING STONE TO
THE GARDEN, THE
PATHS, THE BEACH,
THE PEOPLE,
THE SOCIAL LIFE.”
—ALAN WANZENBERG