Through an unconventional implantation, House Two articulates the house’s every-day program in a single level. Opposing the site’s natural slope, the house and garden develop 3,5 meters above street level, via an elemental ground operation that transforms the preexistent rise in two main horizontal plans, above and below. Both realms are gradually articulated by architectural operations.
More than a parking lot, the 500 square meter court, porous and transparent, amounts to an access plaza, carefully designed and partially sheltered by the second’s level large volume. This liberated place directs the observer toward the Central Patio, open at the center of the second level volume, and manifest in the plaza by a rectangular water tank. This Patio not only articulates the houses three stories, but also generates it’s entrance through the staircase.
The program’s proposition is clear and simple: one walkway circumscribed to the Patio, and articulated by the family room, meeting place by definition and reinforced by this duality of passing versus staying.
As in a screenplay, this circulation tells the story of the program in absolute equal terms: bedrooms, living room, kitchen, terrace, etc., create all possible programmatic relations without interference. Thus the house scale is preserved in a rectangular single story program holding over 520 square meters, with large spaces, with control levels common to compact projects, but autonomies common to disaggregated plans.
