D-Aqui Design
Tourism Service in Las Catalinas, Guanacaste, Costa Rica.
A Studio in Car-Free Beach Town
D-Aqui Design sits among the shops of Beach Town in Las Catalinas, the pedestrian seaside village on Playa Danta in Guanacaste, northwest Costa Rica. The studio is owned by Costa Rican architect Andrina Fonseca, and its name means from here. Fonseca also designed the interiors of Santarena Hotel, a short walk through the same plazas.
Las Catalinas keeps cars outside the neighborhood. You park at the entrance lot or arrive by taxi or shuttle, then continue on foot along cobbled streets, stair passages, and courtyards. Beach Town is a compact core of residences, mixed-use buildings, hotels, a beach club, restaurants, and boutiques on about 21 acres along the Pacific, with tropical dry forest and trail systems behind the terracotta rooftops. D-Aqui is the design-focused stop on that walkable grid, near apparel, consignment, outdoor gear, and a gourmet market.
Costa Rican Furnishings and Handmade Objects
The studio sells authentic Costa Rican design, including furnishings, kitchenware, and linens. Handmade furniture, art, and decoration accessories come through native artisans and reflect local customs and the dry-forest and beach landscape around town. Look for rustic wooden tables, paintings of native Costa Rican animals, lamps, vases, cushions, and related home pieces.
Custom-designed furnishings can be shipped abroad, which helps if you are outfitting a house in town or sending a larger object home after a beach stay. The mix emphasizes Costa Rican makers rather than generic resort souvenirs. Fonseca's international architectural experience, including earlier work at Gensler, sits behind both the shop and her hotel interiors.
Santarena's rooms and public spaces used teak wood floors, burlap-wrapped lighting, and custom-woven furniture made by local artisans, with a blue-green drawn from the ocean a few steps from the hotel. Those finishes belong to the hotel, not to every object on the shop floor. If wood, weave, and coastal color are what you want in your own rooms, this is the Beach Town studio where Fonseca's practice sells furniture-scale and decorative work.
Walking a Design Stop Into the Rest of the Day
A day in Las Catalinas moves on foot from residence or hotel to beach, trail, and plaza. Playa Danta and Playa Dantita are black-sand beaches within walking distance of Beach Town. The neighboring forest reserve holds multi-use trails for walking and mountain biking, with views toward the Catalina Islands and the Pacific. After a swim or a morning on the trails, the same pedestrian streets lead to shops.
Wood, textile, and table scale are easier to judge in daylight. From D-Aqui you can continue to Las Catalinas Collection for clothing and accessories, Copper and Stone for gourmet food and wine, Chunches Consignment for consigned goods, and Pura Vida Ride for bikes, paddleboards, and outdoor apparel. None of those stops need a car once you are inside town.
Sunset dining is a short walk as well, whether you stay near Santarena's bakery and restaurant or climb to open-air tables overlooking the bay. Kitchenware and linens can go back to a villa in your hands. Furniture meant for shipping is a longer conversation: settle crate size, destination, and timing in person before you move on to dinner.
Choosing Artisan Furniture on the Guanacaste Coast
Decide before you browse whether you need something that fits in a suitcase, something for a rental week, or something that will live in a Guanacaste house through salt air and indoor-outdoor rooms. Kitchenware, linens, cushions, and smaller vases travel more easily than a rustic wooden table. Paintings need proper packing. Custom furnishings need measurements: doorway widths, terrace depth, and the height of existing seating.
In person, it helps to know who made the piece, what wood or textile it uses, whether a table finish is meant for a humid coast, how long a custom order takes, and how shipping abroad is arranged. Bring photos of the room if you are matching a villa. Residents finishing a home in Beach Town or on the hillside streets above it should think about compact footprints and rooms that open to terraces, because large pieces still have to move through pedestrian passages and stair streets.
If you are comparing shops, treat D-Aqui as the furniture and décor studio. Beachwear and Costa Rican-phrase clothing live at Las Catalinas Collection. Wine, cheese, and breakfast provisions live at Copper and Stone. Outdoor equipment lives at Pura Vida Ride. Keeping those roles straight cuts extra loops through the heat.
Arriving From Liberia and Moving Without a Car
Liberia International Airport is about an hour away on a paved road. You can rent a car, take a taxi or Uber, or arrange a shuttle. Rental cars stay in the parking lot at the entrance. From that point the town is people-only: pebbled public spaces, fountains, courtyards, and narrow streets where shops sit next to homes.
Wear shoes that can handle pavers and stairs. Midday Guanacaste heat is strong through the year, so morning or late afternoon is more comfortable if you will be carrying packages. Plan the last stretch of any large purchase; there is no driving up to the door. Staying in town, you can walk a lamp or a set of linens home. Day-visiting from Playa Flamingo, Tamarindo, or Playas del Coco, you return to the entrance lot and then drive.
The architecture around the studio mixes Mediterranean hill-town and Latin American colonial cues with tropical indoor-outdoor rooms. That setting is part of why people shop for furniture here: the same streets that display the objects also show how they might live on a balcony or in a courtyard. Beach Town is small enough that you can see the studio, the hotel Fonseca designed, the market, and the beach in one unhurried circuit.
Preparing for a Purchase
Know your list: table, lamp, vase, cushion, painting, kitchenware, linens, or a custom furnishing to ship. Note the dimensions of the space that will receive the piece. If international shipping is likely, have a delivery address ready. Look at construction in person; handmade work varies from piece to piece.
For a custom order, agree on materials, maker, timeline, and packing before you leave Guanacaste. For smaller objects, buying on the same visit avoids a second trip through the entrance gate. Pair the stop with the rest of Beach Town so you are not making a special journey in the heat for a single cushion, then continue to the beach, the trails, or a plaza table with the errand already done.