The functional program for this house is pretty conventional. On the ground floor the are 3 bedrooms, the main one with dressing room and a private bathroom , and the other ones with a shared bathroom; it also includes a spacious kitchen with a special place for breakfast, both with visual to the courtyard, and a dinning and sitting room integrated with the gallery.
The client expressed the necessity of having a working space inside the house, so it was made far from the private zone and it is connected with the sitting room. On the subsoil it was developed a double garage and a service room with an included bathroom.
The family was specially concerned about the sitting room and the gallery (merged for possible events) the main bedroom and the kitchen, that’s why they were given broader dimensions, the best visuals and cross-ventilation.
The project is defined by the topography of the land. It´s located in a corner, with 1700 m2 and a grade of 15 mts. It is embedded in a very rugged terrene, so it generates multiple visuals either to the valley or to other hills with the presence of lots of vegetation. As it is a corner land, it gives the possibility of accessing by a side slope or up and then down. Lots of alternatives were checked, if the access was by the top, although the house had 3 floors, it remain lower compared to the level of the superior street; if the access was by the slope side, many complications of the floor would make fragmented spaces in the interior.
Finally, we insisted on generating the access by the top, so it appeared the idea of making a green terrace with a shaft through which you access the house. By this way we annulled the competition between the entry scale and the immensity of the landscape, making the house disappear and giving the feeling that the ground continues and blends with nature.
The fact of letting the ground continue, works as a weather protection from the south aggression.
Too objects resolve the functional diagram. One of them is a basebord made of stone, which seems to come from the hill, and it is supported by the main one, wich is more artificial and geometric, made of reinforced concrete in a form of L.
This geometry generates a limit between both streets and creates a yard which contains the pool.
The gallery and the bathrooms are detached from the “L”. These are distinguished because of their lower height and are separated by a top continuous skylight which illuminates all the interior spaces.
The qualitative difference of these objects is also given by the orientation. The one looking to the street is more extroverted as it faces the north, and the one facing south is the climatic barrier where the services and the gallery (west) are housed.
I want to make a special mention to the west orientation in Córdoba, as for most of the architects here it is one of the main challenges to solve. This is because the best visuals are in this orientation.
This house is not the exception as the dining room looks to the west, but it has a natural protection that consists on an existing grove and an artificial one that consists on shutters.
Between other highlights is the green terrace that covers the whole house (with the exception of the gallery). It gives a thermal insulation and coalescence with the landscape which reduces the impact of the construction in the nature.
The using of intermediate spaces, such as the entrance yard orientated to the south. As it is buried, it avoids the negative impact of this orientation and gives different space scales to it habitants.
Also, the using of lighting from above in all spaces, not also enhances them but reduces the artificial lights use during the day. Each skylight uses an orientation with a different idea of lighting. It could either be indirect or forming lines according the hours and orientations.
The house has central hitting and refrigeration through Splits, whose condensing units will be located in the courtyard next to the dinning room.
The carpentry will be of aluminium with DVH in order to reduce the refrigeration and hitting costs.
Regarding the structure, it was decided to develop it as independient, made of reinforced concrete. The foundations are deep, as superficial and lineal excavations would be very conflictive because of the rocky ground.
Columns were disposed in order to make a weave with flat beams that sustain little slabs. Brick walls enclosure most of the house, but in the places of visual opening, glass surfaces from roof to floor were used.
