Children’s Museum of Costa Rica
Unknown · San José, Costa Rica · 1910
The Children’s Museum occupies the former Central Penitentiary of San José, turning a fortress-like institutional complex into a public educational destination. The reuse preserves the building’s dense masonry character, towers and courtyards while radically changing its social meaning and program. Brightly colored interventions and exhibition spaces now occupy what was once a carceral environment. The project is architecturally valuable as a large-scale example of adaptive reuse in the center of San José and as a visible transformation of state infrastructure into cultural space.