We have wonderful news to share from El Prado. Castillo Arquitectos has received a Design Excellence Award in the Missing Middle category at the 2026 Urban Guild Awards for Los Altos Flats, its residential project overlooking the Pacific ocean.
This is the second year in a row that the Urban Guild has recognized the firm’s work in Las Catalinas. In 2025, Castillo Arquitectos received the same distinction in the Mixed Use category for Plaza del Mercado Flats. For those of us who watched Los Altos take shape, from the first work on the slope to the final coats of paint on its façades, this one feels especially close to home.
The Urban Guild brings together architects and urbanists around a mission to improve the design of communities. Its Design Excellence Award honors built work, completed within the past five years, that applies timeless design principles and integrates them thoughtfully into its urban context. One of its subcategories is Missing Middle, a term coined in 2010 by architect Daniel Parolek of Opticos Design to describe a range of house-scale buildings with multiple units, compatible in scale and form with detached single-family homes and located in walkable neighborhoods. These buildings sit in the middle of the spectrum between single-family houses and mid-rise apartment blocks, and they are called “missing” because, in the United States, zoning made them difficult or even illegal to build for most of the last eighty years, even though the older examples remain some of the most loved homes in many cities.
Here in Costa Rica, Los Altos brings this idea to life by gathering several homes at the scale of a large house in El Prado, within walking distance of the plazas, shops, trails, and the beaches of Playa Danta and Playa Dantita, where getting around on foot comes naturally. It also widens the range of homes in Town, offering a different way to put down roots here alongside single-family houses and villas.
Los Altos is made up of two residential buildings with 12 apartments, and it also includes 12 parking spaces on its lower levels. Rather than reshaping the mountain to fit the architecture, Castillo Arquitectos let the buildings step down the natural slope. This stepped section reduces earthwork and respects the existing topography, and it is also what gives every residence open views toward the Pacific, natural light, privacy, and cross ventilation.
Each apartment opens onto generous terraces and a private pool oriented toward the horizon, so daily life moves easily between inside and out, as it should in a tropical climate. The architects describe the project’s ambition not as creating an iconic form, but as allowing the architecture to step back so the landscape can take the lead.
Our congratulations to Eduardo Castillo Cortés and the entire Castillo Arquitectos team, to the Development and Construction Team from Las Catalinas who brought Los Altos to life, and to the neighbors who now call it home. Next time you walk up through El Prado, take a moment to look up and enjoy how naturally these two buildings sit in the landscape.