Long ago, in a beautiful Portuguese village, we saw a house in which threshold was read, "my dream." Will there be something more inspiring that the challenge of making a dream come true? This project sought to fulfill the wishes shared by three sisters: a home integrated with the landscape and tradition of the area, respectful of the environment and full of nooks to enjoy themselves.

This haven is construed as three separate units; three sisters and their families, three houses with beautiful views and good orientation but with certain intimacy between them as well. Three houses standing together but not intermingled; a garden, an olive grove and a shared courtyard, a place for all their cousins, a place for all their friends.

The architectural aim for the home was for it to merge with the sorrounding landscape, a valley of vineyards and olive threes, clearly signaling an attitude more concerned with the contextual determinants than with itself through its confused geometry and a certain expectant materiality - an uninhibited architecture waiting for its transformation with the passing of time, for its façades to turn gray in the sun and bear witness to the marks of joyfull lived lives as they appear.

This shared home strives to administer high doses of ethical and aesthetic coherence to offer Irene, Minuca and María Ángeles a place for relishing life.

Construction and Energy

It is a simple construction using materials and techniques from the area and with full and characteristic treated pine siding, ensuring that the raw material used comes from forest exploitation that is ecologically, economically and socially responsible.

Following analysis of the site's microclimate, with its cold winters and hot summers (with cool nights), and aware that Murcia is one of the regions with the most insolation in Europe, multiple strategies were employed to take advantage of these circumstances and adapt the home to the climatic environment where it is located, providing comfort and energy efficiency:

·   The size of openings are designed in function of their orientation, so that the surface of these to North is of 15%, 5% to West, 10% to East and 70% to South (with appropriate solar protection)

·   Low emissivity glass and exterior jalousies are used to avoid heat loss in the winter and the entrance of solar radiation in summer

·   Cross ventilation is introduced and maximized with stratification systems that allow fast heat dissipation.

·   Energy expenditure is minimized by biomass heating, with some materials of high thermal inertia for the interior, big contribution of solar irradiation in winter and a wide and continuous thermal isolation by the outside that avoids the thermal bridges.

·   There is also a system of rainwater collection for use in irrigating the fruit trees and the orchard.

All in all, this rural architecture is designed to make use of ancestral knowledge and to update some traditional building solutions.