To own an Oscar Imbert house is to have a work of contemporary Caribbean art. For the past 20 years, wealthy homeowners in Punta Cana and Cap Cana have entrusted the design of their splendid vacation villas to the Puerto Plata-born architect, confident that he will deliver a unique tropical home. But to own an Oscar Imbert house in Santo Domingo, the capital city of the Dominican Republic, is truly to experience a Caribbean city architectural gem.

Imbert is known as an innovator for melding the vernacular with modern functionality and respect for the environment. His trademark is a daring mélange of ancestral Taino Indian, traditional campesino style, his Victorian Puerto Plata hometown architecture and Spanish architectural heritage. All these styles are honed for modern-day tropical living and have worked best in designs where there is sprawling space, as in the coastal beach settings.

But when Nelsi Giacinti, his girlfriend during their university years, asked him to design her upscale suburban home in Arroyo Hondo in 1992, he acquiesced. Giacinti had the full support of her French husband, a businessman who first came to the DR in 1979 to work in the travel industry.

What is most notable is the way Imbert succeeded in keeping to his signature style, despite the restricted space and a bustling city street (Calle Erick Leonard Eckman) outside the gates, instead of the usual horizon of beach or golf course.

The name Oscar Imbert brings certain things to mind—high roofs, tall doors, airflow, bright colours, palm trees. A front gate of palm wood slats framed by iron marks the entrance where a cluster of tall palm trees stands guard. There is a hint of palm-thatched roof on the second floor. The two-storey façade is partly covered by coral stone slabs. A four-metre Brazilian walnut door hints that something unusual may be found on the other side. From outside, the house seems like a fortress, but those who are invited indoors will enter a magic world where natural illumination, unexpected colours, shapes and materials play upon the imagination.

Imbert’s greatest challenge in the design of the house in the city was to keep to his trademark of blurring boundaries between indoor and outdoor living in a setting where both security and noise pollution are concerns, and with restricted space to work with. For a lateral section of the frontal wall, he chose a cement grillwork to let the light in while filtering the sun’s rays to reduce irradiation, with the instant effect of lowering the inside temperature. The grille is framed with ironwork at the top for security, enabling the doors and windows within to remain open.

Then he was free to go about what he does best, creating great living spaces that are entertainment friendly, inviting contemplation and respecting the environment, while maintaining family privacy. From the foyer, the design makes the statement that this is a house built in communion with nature. There is the dramatic placement of a nispero fruit-bearing tree in the circular courtyard, part of the original lot, surrounded by a rock pond under the stairs that lead to the private family area on the second floor.

Works of art by Dominican Rincon Mora, Ecuador’s Guayasamin, who visited the DR on several occasions, and Haiti’s Lyonel Laurenceau line the walls of the living room, providing a Latin and Caribbean touch. The furniture is placed for the contemplation of nature. From one angle the outdoor pool and surrounding gardens are visible. From another, an interior garden can be seen, where a philodendron hugs another palm tree against a backdrop of the palm wood sidings of a campesino house wall that leads to the kitchen and dining room. The dining room opens to the living area with a triangular connection of sliding doors.

The house is indeed an ode to the palm tree, the trademark of the architect who popularised palm-thatched roofs, bringing them back into fashion when he designed the striking Punta Cana International Airport in 1983. For the city house, he commissioned ironwork in the shape of palm tree branches at second-floor level in the living room access to the pool and the terraces where intimate friend and family time takes place.

The terrace-bordering gardens outside the living room doors bring in shades of green to contrast with the striking pinks, reds, blues, oranges and yellows chosen by the architect for the interior. The gardens blend right in with the intense pink of the bougainvillea, while scents of oregano and basil come from the planters around the terrace. A lemon verbena blossom tree, with its wonderful citrus aroma, also livens the senses beside the backyard terrace that blends in seamlessly with the home.

Imbert is one of the DR’s strongest voices for more respect for truly tropical elements in Dominican architecture, calling for designs to adapt to the economic condition and climate. “We have forgotten about the Caribbean breeze,” Imbert says. “We are erecting glass buildings, typical of large cities like New York,” says the architect who studied at the Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña (UNPHU) in Santo Domingo and went on to do graduate studies at Pratt Institute in New York City in 1983. He is critical of what he considers excessive use of air conditioning in buildings in the DR. His Santo Domingo house then breaks the Santo Domingo modernity paradigm, letting air flow through to create comfort without air conditioning.

Materials need to adapt and be resistant without clashing with the surroundings, explains Imbert, since DR is in the hurricane path. For him, good Caribbean architecture is about not having to shut oneself indoors when it rains. “The Caribbean is synonymous with sun and light, thus the capital importance of light when designing Caribbean homes.’’