The concept for the VM house is to extrapolate the traditional corner house, placed in the front of the parcel and locate it at the opposite corner of the site instead. This schematic variation makes space for a frontal garden and also extends the peripheral views to the neighboring landscape.
The house borders the limits, forming an “L” shape diagram that adds privacy to the intimate areas of the house and also amplifies the horizon towards the public areas of the neighborhood.
The building turns its back to the west in its longest segment and to the south in its shortest. It is an “L” shaped scheme, made of simple and idealized volumes that surround the garden with its public areas in order to make the exterior an inseparable part of the interior. The public areas of the house dissolve their boundaries with the garden in order to provoke a feeling of being “a little in, a little out”.
The house is elevated 1.20 mt. from the ground level to conform a platform in order to minimize the use of bordering walls and also to facilitate the design of slanted gardens towards the exterior.
The peripheral easements in the back of the house are used to facilitate private activities for the family; patios spotted with water and greenery, designed for family interaction and also to extend their glow into to the interior of the house.
The family room is the center of activity at the second level; the double height vestibule, the bedrooms, the main stair and the hallway are all part of the same space; this is a large scale vestibule into the bedrooms where family members can perform individual, as well as communitarian activities in a family oriented atmosphere.
This is a corner house that inverts the prototype in order to take advantage of the surrounding landscape. The volumes are simple and contrasted, where the transparency of the ground floor invites for the enjoyment of the outdoors; the heaviness of the second level acts as a complementary volume that shields for family privacy. The house absorbs the exterior in order to become a part of living “a little in, a little out”; a solution that embodies living surrounded by green and embraced by light.
