A beach community in Guanacaste will be getting a special Christmas gift in January. Nine brilliant young minds from the New York Institute of Technology are coming to Costa Rica in January to share their knowledge and environmental moxie with the people of Playa Nosara in an effort to promote sustainability.

One of the most difficult lessons being learned by people in Costa Rica is that their many precious ecosystems are as delicate as they are beautiful. Such has been the lesson learned by the community of Playa Nosara in Guanacaste, a once pristine beach that is now threatened by an accumulation of trash that has been building up over the years. The trash problem in Playa Nosara is the result of many years of uneven development for the once-sleepy beach town. The large influx of tourists and new residents has proven burdensome for Playa Nosara; just last month volunteers and members of the Ocean Conservancy non-profit group scheduled two major cleanups along the beach.

The nine NYIT Architecture students who will arrive in Costa Rica in January 2012 were selected by a voting process on Facebook where they had a chance to showcase their innovative green projects.

The winning project in terms of popular voting was Team POROSO, conceptualized by Vincenzo Ciaramella, Wagdy Moussa and Alfonso Rodriguez. Team POROSO proposes a recycling center that is easily accessible to any member of the community and which is designed to take advantage of natural lighting and ventilation.

MCD Costa Rica is the name of a structural building project which was selected by a jury. This project aims to educate the Playa Nosara community on how they can construct functional and neat buildings using recycled materials within their reach.

The members of the all-female DUALITY project will present their vision of a recycling center flanked by an educational facility and a waste disposal facility.

The nine students will first present their projects at Veritas University in San Jose, and later to the community of Playa Nosara. These sustainable architectural projects follow principles observed by Engineers Without Borders and Freedom by Design.