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Brief notes on a house with no appearance.
This is a single-family house, but quite a large one, something over 5 hundred square meters, site is narrow and long and sloped towards south.
Two different schemes superimposed one on top the other; a longitudinal one, based on spatial forking, and the one underneath, based on a hand fingers like configuration. As a result, it is a fractured mass, ruled by the rhythm of the roof structure.
Some other important things are the growth against the slope, entrance through the umbilicus and permeable skins that thicken space boundaries.
Upper level is a daytime pavilion with a metal roof structure that goes all the way through in visual continuity, with long views through a sequence of spaces.
Concrete supporting walls and glass enclosure are the other two vertical elements, blurring the idea of interior and exterior.
Rooms below are burrow like, with nested openings in between them.
As for the floor plan solution, structure above combs space in a single direction, transversal to movement while below, penetrations fragment the volume bringing light deep inside the built mass.
It is a formless project in the sense that is impossible getting any volumetric understanding as spectator, also because of the camouflage of the permeable skin with the concrete, dynamic in perception because of light.
The permeable skin follows the same rhythm in pattern of vertical lines as the concrete surfaces; is not only about the absence of frames, supporting elements are secondary and intentionally hidden and as thin as possible, also for the moveable parts.
It is an inhabitable porous enclosure, made by superimposition of multiple layer with different density and permeability and therefore, different degrees of interiority.
For this project we have been not only the architects but also the general contractor; this time, not only the art or process of building was in our hands but the act of physical construction.
The house takes account of sustainability criteria in which some high technology is used, always trying to preserve the natural resources without involving high technology investment. The architectural design is the main protagonist of the sustainable decisions which highlights: cross ventilation, green roofs to minimize transmission of solar radiation heat in summer, and to collect rainwater that allows watering garden plants. Solar protection through deciduous plant barriers, practicable jalousies, exterior spaces in shade, ventilated air chambers underneath the building, covered by green mass semi buried exterior walls and finally the use of solar collectors.
estudio.entresitio
estudio.entresitio is a partnership formed by Maria Hurtado de Mendoza and Cesar Jimenez de Tejada since 1993, and Jose Maria Hurtado de Mendoza, who joined the office in 2003, after working in Rafael Moneo’s office for four years. Cesar teach at Madrid’s School of Architecture ETSAM and Maria teached at ETSAM and Cornell Uni., nowadays at NJIT. Maria and Jose Maria were both granted with the Rome’s Prize in the Spanish Academy, Cesar got a Master of “Advanced Architectural Design” at Columbia University with a Fulbright scholarship. They have won several competitions that allowed them to build a number of projects, amongst which health care centers and social housing dwellings are the main topics. Their work has been published in many journals around the world, being selected as “Design Vanguard” by the Architectural Record magazine in 2007. It has also been shown in several international exhibitions and main constructed projects have been recognized with prizes and honorable mentions in more than 37 awards.
