This solid volume has two irregular and faceted perforations, as if they were large extracted stones. One at the back, which opens a small terrace towards the garden. The other is a mirror that reflects a portion of the mountain landscape in the composition of the façade and allows you to observe the movement of the town from the kitchen.

On the staircase, the concrete overflows towards the living room with its first steps, which emerge from the ground, and rises like a light structure of folded white sheet metal that floats between the concrete walls.

To the north, there are the other two modules intended for social, tectonic, industrial technology and material unity spaces through the white finish. Built in a metal structure placed every four meters that supports the roof of round sticks, covered with tongue and groove on the inside and corrugated sheet metal on the outside. This lightness allows the interior space to flow, integrating the living-dining room with the gallery. The upper floor overlooks both the patio and the dining room.

Finally, the house is wrapped with a system of mobile enclosure that enable and qualify an intermediate space. The various opening configurations that regulate the entry of light define the interior atmosphere and the envelope is therefore changing, sensitive to the environment and use. Being a weekend house, it remains completely closed most of the time, evidencing its formal synthesis.

With details such as the entrance handle made up of four floating stones of White Micosa, a step of Field Stone suspended on the terrace, the intentional changes in scale and a glass line throughout the development of the house that separates the white from the concrete base, the aim is to reinforce the evident duality between solidity and lightness of the work. With the differentiated opening towards the mountain landscape that integrates it into the environment plus the juxtaposition of construction techniques, the dialogue between the essential, the enduring and the ethereal is established.

Text provided by the architects.

The house has 2 entrances: The daily income is given by the lower part of the lot, while the main income is presented at the top of it. The street level is above the roof, which acts as a large reception square/viewpoint, from where you can see an imposing view of the mountains and the city of Cordoba. It is covered with reinforced concrete and flooded, resolving the materiality of the square, providing thermal and energy balance inside, at a low cost and contributing to the natural environment. The materiality of the house follows the concept of the use of raw, bare noble materials, expressing its nature and generating a respectful relationship with the environment. In addition to concrete, local stone, wood and glass were used.

Text provided by the architect.

Its regular and uniform level (a reinterpretation of the Farnsworth de Ludwig Mies van der Rohe house) contributes to the flexibility of use, producing an articulation between the social area and the private spaces through the humid areas. Its large glazed enclosures, which are concealed, enable continuous and direct expansion, increasing the social areas.

To reduce the use of resources, passive aspects like galleries, cross ventilation, regulation of solar incidence, adequate thermal insulation, and exploitation of natural light were added. Furthermore, active strategies were included, such as systems of rainwater collection for irrigation, biodigester for the sewage water, and a solar collector to heat the water, reducing the use of natural resources. Partition walls with phenolic sheets of wood shaving, derived from products made with recycled materials, contributed internally comfortable characteristics typical of rural cabins.

Implementing sustainability strategies, the zinc-clad envelope creates a barrier on the lateral walls and a sunshade effect on the cover through the roof extension, creating an air chamber that isolates the dwelling from the outside, decreasing the energy needed to condition it and its exposure to the open air.

The envelope complements a system of pivoting enclosures of a micro-perforated sheet, which regulates the incidence of sun rays and grants the visual entailment with the landscape, thereby providing security when the house is uninhabited. The application of raw concrete and natural wood in flooring and garden paths emphasizes the natural treatment of the composition.

In the volume of the dwelling, the combination of walls and phenolic partitions with the structure and metallic envelope, permeable for the most part, brings a visual effect of transparency and contrast. These construction solutions allowed for speed of execution, storage capacity in an area that is difficult to access, and reduction of future maintenance costs.

The environmental regeneration is currently in execution through the design of the exterior landscape with native plants, aspiring to restore the indigenous flora and its associated fauna, which have been affected by deforestation and urban growth.

Text provided by the architect.

Each block, in its interior, is in turn divided into two longitudinal strips that organise the dwelling and are materialised with different finishes as appropriate.

On the one hand, those bordering the internal courtyards contain the more specific spaces such as kitchens, bathrooms and storage areas. The strips that face the front and the spaces at the back are spaces with a greater degree of indeterminacy that allow for other uses such as living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms and desks.

With regard to the units, the project is based on the premise of being sufficiently flexible to group or ungroup modules both in plan and in section. Seven typologies are thus configured, based on the wishes and needs of their future inhabitants, which despite being all different, maintain the initial structure and organisation of the project.

Special attention was given to the common spaces: the decision was taken to restore the existing garden and swimming pool, and new native species were planted to encourage greater biodiversity. On the other hand, an area of the rooftop has been set aside to create a shared green terrace space with a barbecue. The scale of the building allows an interesting appropriation of these spaces so that all those who live there have access to areas that their homes do not offer.

Text provided by the architect.

From the outside, mono material. A thick work that emerges from the place. Reinforced concrete resolves the structure and space; the relationship between the sun and the cell phone. Their walls have a rugged finish capable of highlighting the country of the weather and imprinting on the work the climate and tones of the land itself. Per dins, it is seen in whip, a warm material in contrast to the harsh exterior, which upon entering will reveal its very particular perfume.

Living on the edge of the treetop, an area for living, eating, cooking and waking up, connecting with the landscape. In contrast, an introverted mezzanine, with a flat floor plan and suspended over the entire building with light from below, provides an atmosphere that favors introspection. A lloc that proposes an other relationship with the country of the times.

Text provided by the architect.

The main circulation links the exterior with the heart of the house; it is materialized as a purely horizontal concrete volume, which due to the slope of the land, in the access sector is detached from the ground at 2.20 metres high, acquiring the physiognomy of a box beam, forming a small atrium whose focal point is a zenithal window that frames the sky, so that every time someone enters or leaves the house executes involuntarily the archaic gesture of looking at the firmament, the vertical infinity that gives us back the precise scale of our becoming in relation to the universe. This circulation bridges the unevenness of the land and articulates all the spaces of the house; it is the place where people invariably walk through at all times. For this reason, it takes a central role in the project, giving continuity to the exterior landscape from inside the house through perforations that lead to internal or external gardens, creating a transition atmosphere between the outside and the domestic environments. A ‘main passage’ that links, orders and leads to the rest of rooms, horizontally and vertically since it is connected to the main staircase in its intermediate rest; a typological determination that leaves both the upstairs rooms and the ground floor rooms with their own services, always equidistant and at a half level from the main meeting space, which is set around the kitchen and a fireplace.

The kitchen is the centre of gravity of the life in this house. The client’s request is expressed in the typological configuration of the residence, being the arrival and stay space where the interior communicates openly and in different directions with the exterior space and the power of its landscape. It constitutes a diaphanous place of average height and a half, presided by a countertop/bar that comes off the ground like a sculpture or a culinary altar which governs during family time, meetings with friends and their experiences, interspersed with gastronomic rites.

The material condition defines and qualifies this house, and it is through it the technique used throughout the whole is expressed. The cyclopean formwork wall technique is an artisanal procedure executed from the experience in working with stone of local workers, that after a casting process it starts printing the texture of the wood that encases the mortar and compresses the stone. It is also built through “error”, and the alignment variations that appear in the wall as the structure rises, the random distribution of the stones and their mineral colour depending on the origin of the quarry where they are extracted, give a physical character, a tactile stimulus to the limits of space. The walls function as texts, a tectonic calligraphy arranged by marks and signs, which will offer infinite variations when exposed to the changing conditions of light and its incidence according to the seasons of the year.
The stark material is exposed to the weather and time is the material procedure for this house to enter into communion with the surrounding landscape.

Text provided by the architect.

The Bonpland 2169 building tries to position itself in this debate, understanding in advance that its size will prevent it from reproducing organizational strategies linked to a larger scale of work. In this case, the starting point is to address the diversity of uses through spatial homogeneity. Instead of projecting a container to host previously established programs, a structure open to different appropriations is offered. A programmatically unstable but spatially specific environment, organized by means of five bays perpendicular to the dividing walls that delimit their technical aptitude at the same time that they offer a good margin of flexibility.

Although our field of action is circumscribed to the area of material organization, our field of reflection overflows it until we can accurately report it. The attention towards the new ways of using the city, the updating of its programs or the appearance of hybrid instances among the uses that we already know, are here moments of vital importance. The main argument of this project is developing a sensitivity according to the objects that each unit will occupy and assuming the challenge of each spatial appropriation allows us to see a new way of living.

Text description provided by the architects.