We have always felt a special interest in transitions, the events that happen between two acts. Those moments that, in these times, are usually treated as mere gaps between supposedly full. Getting home.
Perhaps this has been the most important idea that we have followed to develop this project, to think of housing as a final point of rest that ends up being reached and it is that path that we decided to portray. In a way, it goes with us, although we feel embarrassed to say it out loud because they are very big words, that idea of the “Corbsuserian promenade”, that thinking of the project as a journey of sensory sequences.
Thus, we describe this project from its arrival where, prior to the perception of its resounding closure, rough and to a certain extent surly for those who look at it, when crossing said barrier we are received by three cork oak tree tops, with their thin leaves while a concrete slab ( that material that acts as a common thread all the way) protects us. We are on the threshold of the house. That protected place prior to the entrance but that is already part of it, of its architecture, one of those transitional spaces on which so much architecture has been referenced.
The pine door, recalling the marks that other boards have left on the concrete, opens onto a hall, converted into a walkway. We are now inside the house, following the walkway that accompanies us if we look to the left over the patio with the cork oaks or if we look down to the right at a nearby landscape of small bushes. Each one will decide what they prefer to watch.
It will be the staircase, the connection of the three levels of the house that closes the first room of the house, and the area of the patio with cork oaks have been left behind to now present the house with a new aspect of the relationship with the outside its west side.
It will be this area of relationship with the western part of the plot that we can understand as the end of the route that began, we do not know where at the time we decided to return home. A spacious, resounding, and clear living room opens up to the recreational area of the plot through windows that, emphasized by the continuity of the ground that invades the pool, allow us to experience the house with an extreme connection with the outside.
As the mood is changeable, more than weighing us down, we liked that the house also offered us a place where we could retire. An intimate, introverted, secluded place… and it is there where that patio that at the entrance of the house offered us the tops of the trees to welcome us, now welcomes us with three powerful concrete walls to give us a patio, a place of classic transition that We have admired so much.
A beautiful granite grandstand seeks to facilitate the events that may happen there, from the joy of the group to the moment of loneliness. This is how we like to think of this project, from its routes, transitions, and spaces “between”.
The project in its materialization seeks a deliberate roundness, as well as a scarce palette of materials, with reinforced concrete guiding the entire project with its marked board formwork that we see replicated in the pine of the carpentry and the closure. Some fantastic pieces of granite will solve the rest of the situations, either with a beautiful groove when it is the facade or, that same stone in large slabs solves the flooring and cladding of a large part of the interior of the house.
Team:
Architect: Castroferro Arquitectos
Technical architects: Adega Da Costa Gonzalez
Collaboratos: Joana Covelo Alonso, Jacobo Pérez Castiñeiras, Alba Teiga Guzmán, Laura Vázquez Seoane
Photographer: Hector Santos-Díez
Materials used:
Facade cladding: Concrete
Flooring: Natural Stone from Pavestone, DFG
Windows: Technal
