single house

The living dike arises from the mimesis, but not with the art as its final objective, but from inhabiting a space which aim is imitating nature.

The principal nature reference are the geological formations of the surroundings of Llano del Arrayan, such as basaltic dikes. This basaltic dikes in Catalanes valley follow a northeast orientation. They are linear volcanic formations of basalts or phonolites that arise from extrusions of the original magma.

The living-dike follows the same orientation as the basaltic dikes of Catalanes. It´s a simple and lineal volume that erosion has been piercing until it has created a cave in the inner part, leading to a living dike.

Are well known the climatic advantages of cave houses, that because of its huge thermal inertia causes constant temperatures all over the year. Another virtue of the cave house is its perfect capacity of camouflage in the environment.

In the same way the proposal shares the same aspiration, it pretends to disappear, by imitating an weathered rock coated by vegetation. The outer casing it´s covered by rocks of the surroundings, and not only the facades, but the roofing also, it´s formed from irregular rocks through which the following vegetation will grow: houseleek from Aeonium genus, that don´t need deep soil but cracks.

The rocks needed for the roofing will be provided from the excavation of the foundation. They would be placed on the roofing in irregular rows from East to West stacked like the ridge of a furrow separated one meter and a height of 40 cm. The different vegetation will be placed on the sides and tops and in the middle little stones and earth.

In order to reduce the visual impact as much as possible the dwelling will be placed next to the existing natural slope and with a height similar to this.

Clinic reform in Algete, Madrid

House city-wall is located in the historical center of Sevilla, just in the heart of Santa Cruz neighbourhood, and close to the Sevilla Cathedral, the Sevilla Real Alcazar, etc…

From the 11th Century to the present, the house has been constructed by different historical layers:
- The city-wall of the main facade from the 11th century.
- The patio and the stone pillars, from the XVIII century
- The general arabic structure of the house formed by the hallway, the corridor and the patio.

The House City-Wall interprets the context.

Situation Plan. The Abd al Aziz is closed to the house and part of the same city-wall.

Location Plan with the three defensive towers of the Alcazar of Sevilla: La Torre del Oro (dodecagon), la Torre de la Plata (octagon) y la Torre de Abd al Aziz (hexagon)

The typology of the house is really particular: it is permeable.

The initial proposal it´s about reusing the old cinema Palafox building located in an block interior courtyard en Luchana Street, Madrid.
The strategy is to use its volumetric characteristics to offer a transformed space which activity would be a contemporary reinterpretation of the 20s cabaret.

The seat area transforms in a relief that fluctuates around the platform stage extended towards the public. Several levels of boxes appear in both sides of the stage and also some rooms in the same levels. All this spaces are involved in a baroque style that constructs and defines the classic cabaret, mixed with modernism, strong minimalism represented by new technologies.

The aim of the building is that the show recreates not only on the stage but all interiors be dynamic spaces where things happen.

The “NORTH FACE” is a house protected by a climbing wall: wrapped and always wet, where the moss growth on the basatls stones. You will need a “good hand” for climbing it.
The house is devoloped along the “north face” wall, and it works like a thermal protector that receives air from a geothermal pipe and from a solar chimney.
The model shows only a part of the house: the North Face wall.
The main intention is to construct the most natural wall as posible. Almost like we cut a natural cliff and we carry it to the land. It is made of basalt stones and projected concrete.

The “ASTEROIDEA” house is a construction without limits. It is a double movement between the extension of nature and the compresion of the architecture.

The house acquiare an asteroidea shape, because of its dimension and because of the vegetation of the land. We optimise the circulations in a radial scheme, and at the same time, we can respect all the existing vegetation.

We use the solar energy but at the same time we protect from it. Between the interior covered spaces and the exterior open spaces there is a long catalogue of diferent kind of intermediates places: the patios, the semicovered patios, the mountains patios, the porchs, the open air porchs, the arbors….

The proposal for the future fair grounds in La Rinconada must address to two completely different temporary situations: the few intense days of the fair and the park that it is the rest of the year.
The objective of our proposal is to make the two moments as compatible as possible.
The free space occupied by the stalls and the Infierno Street can generate a distressing bare area when there is no fair.

Our proposal aims to ensure that this necessary empty space, which allows the easy installation of the stalls during the fair, does not make the park into an inhospitable space.
To achieve this, the organization of the stalls within the park seeks to avoid big leveled areas and to answer to an organic system rather than a tectonic system.
That is, a park where it is possible to set up the stalls but avoiding as much as possible big empty spaces.
The stalls are located along a continuous line to attain the largest perimeter possible to generate extra spaces that break the continuous emptiness destined for stalls.
Our proposal is not based on urban planning criteria (as the Seville Fair is), but is ruled by laws closer to the organic in nature.
A ribbon that curls and generates park spaces in its interior, on the borders, as well as along the ribbon itself.
The future fair ground is formed by different layers that configure the multipurpose and flexible park capable of accommodating all type of events, from the most intense fair to normal park activities.

Perhaps a Bullring is the most hybrid building in existence in relation to the variety of programs.

Apart from the specific place for the bullfight itself, like the bullring and the stands for the public, a series of annexed premises are necessary to complement the main use. Thus, exclusive places for the cattle are required, such as bullpens, with enclosures and stalls for bulls, and the stables with its courtyard for the horses and the slaughterhouse for quartering the dead cattle; spaces for the bullfighter, such as the chapel and the clinic; spaces for managing the bullring and spaces for the public such as the bullfighting museum, the cafeteria-restaurant and the rest rooms.

Our proposal aims to recover the public condition of the first bullrings when the bullfights took place in the public squares of villages. It was only with the Industrial Revolution that bullrings became permanent buildings, because the cattle and the bullfighters were able to move thanks to the new railway transport.
The bullring is hence surrounded by smaller squares that house the different programs annexed to the main one. A single roof or marquee organizes the different activities and generates a public space sheltered from sun and rain. A new city square for Blanca.
The main elements that form this project are the following:

-The main square formed by the bullring and the stands, with the corresponding spaces for transit movement and entrances.

-The bubbles corresponding to the secondary squares that house the annex programs.

-The marquee which generates a new public space and classifies the different programs.

-The bullfighter’s costume. The main square is ‘dressed’ with a skin of ceramic lattice that reproduces the intricate embroidery of bullfighters’ costumes, and which at the same time is brightened by the different colors of the costumes.

A market is a still nature.
A place to exchange still natures.

Many images come to mind when we say the word ‘market’.
Images with and without life.

A shoal of fish swimming above your head when you are diving. Wonderful.
Tuna loins on the ice in the fishmonger.

A orchard of orange trees, with their bright points of color against the green leaves.
The impressive arrangement of oranges in the fruit shops.

The wild poppies on the sides of roads.
The scent of jasmine, daisies, oleanders…

They are references from private worlds, from lived experiences, memories…
They are not tectonic.

We propose a building as the sum of experiences and feelings.
Not a building with the shape of a market, but a building which is formed through its reference to natural systems:
- Scales.
- Flowers.
- Tuna loin and belly steaks. From dark grey to white.
- Infinite colors.
- The seasons.
A vaporous building.
A building that can change color. That adapts to the natural cycles, to the seasons: blue, green, yellow, brown; winter, spring, summer and fall.
A building with a recognizable image.

We are working on the limit: in the place where historically the city turns into farmlands. An enclave that has been kept unchanged since the origins of the Convent of Saint Francisco. The site proposed for the competition is a place which has always been empty, which has only been occasionally occupied as a vegetable garden for the Convent, as shown on Torriani’s early plans, and more recently as an area destined to military use, but its characteristic emptiness has always persisted.
The city of La Laguna is World Heritage for its urban planning morphology, which makes it into one of the first models for cities without walls.

Our proposal considers the urban emptiness surrounding the Convent of Saint Francisco as a historical asset to be protected. A place recognizable for its emptiness within the urban morphology of the city of La Laguna. We must not only preserve what is built in our heritage, but also, as in this case, what is not built.

We do not want an impressive building or an urban landmark, but rather to maintain the emptiness that has persisted until the present. A building which emerges as a result of a historical process that started with the vegetable gardens of the Convent of Saint Francisco. A project with straightforward logic: to protect this urban emptiness.

Urban emptiness. We propose building around the present site limits, so its interior remains free. A variable bay which is adapted to the urban surrounding area and the program. Building the border to free the interior. And thus, making the urban emptiness into a public space related to the Faculty of Education.

Our proposal occupies 50% of the site. The limit: the wall-vegetable plot. The building is structured as a ‘wall’, as a recreation of La Laguna fences.
A wall adapted to the geometric conditions of the surroundings. But it is not just a wall, it is an equipped space: a double façade with a layer of vegetation in its interior.

We find ourselves surrounded by a low density environment formed by single-family houses and a system of five-story blocks closing the main avenue.

The plot is located in the collective housing system on the main avenue. But we are interested in certain elements of the terraced single-family housing system.

INTERESTS
1. The house + the free space of the plot.
2. The possibilities of growth deriving from this, as long as we do not run out of buildable area.

STRATEGY
1. Piling up the terraced houses.
2. Dividing the houses in two parts:
a) built space 60 m2
b) free space or plot 60 m2
3. The opened and preset system of growth on the plot. You decide what you need.
4. A façade that can be rolled up which arranges all the movements system in the different types of houses.
It has two functions; the image of domestic scale through the serigraphy with floral motifs, and the protection against sun and cold.

The Alamedilla Park complicated and attractive place.
A fascinating park on a plot with multiple relations.

Our project proposes a park-building and a building-park. A strategy which attempts to dilute the limits, the existing ones as well as the new ones we propose.

A Sports Pavilion that is capable of mixing with the park, which is not limited to the traditional shape of a sport center.
A park that is capable of erasing its own limits or emphasizing them, extending like a shapeless stain towards the pavilion: a sports park.

We propose a sports center that can be used for the same number hours as the Alamedilla Park itself, independently of the activities carried out inside. A sports center where the exterior public space is as important as the interior space.
In short, an extension of the park’s public space.

The Alamedilla Park is a fascinating landscape and because of this, we propose a minimum strategy. A design that highlights its qualities, based on small changes in the flower beds borders.

Women’s Institute-Municipal Archive and Shadow Square_ Memory

The center of Móstoles City, although it seems to have a caothic condition, it is formed by a structure of differents public squares. From the Town Hall Square, there is urban pathway that conects the Cultura Square, the Ernesto Peces Square and the Pradillo Square.

The IMAM project, located between party walls, it is conceived like one more square that belongs to this general structure of public spaces. It not only proposes a new passageway between Colón and Ricardo Medem Streets but also a new half-covered public space with vegetation, childs playground, benchs….

Although they are two buildings with different functions, the Women’s Institute and the Municipal Archive, the construction is configured as one piece, pierced by longitudinal courtyards. From the public square, these courtyards penetrate the building becominng huge flower beds with different types of scented climbing plants, sage, lavander and bamboo.

According to the competition requirements, the old Casino facade has been rebuilt, but with a new system of perforated galvanized steel plates, which arrange the access to the Municipal Archive, and also a new glasshouse between this facade and the new building.

Each courtyard generates two facade systems: the north facades, formed by large concrete walls washed with surface deactivant agent, and colored methacrylate bubbles; and the south facades, formed by large panes of different types of glass according to the sun’s position. Both structural facades are also supported by V-shaped pillars, which free the ground floor space.

We are proposing a building without refinement. A raw building.
The structure is the finish of the building, the installations are visible, without false ceilings, etc… Only the colored methacrylate bubbles and the graffiti done by the Boamistura group of artists, will contrast with the rest of the building.

The configuration of the building’s structural system is based on mixed porticoes made of steel and concrete.
The porticoes on the north side are formed by reinforced concrete screens, which work as deep beams, supported on HEM metallic pillars in a V shape.
The porticoes on the south side are formed by HEM metallic pillars which make triangular geometries to reduce the openings of the concrete beams.
The ends of each piece are freed up by large cantilevers of between 5 and 6 m., supported by the concrete screens and by the strenght of the HEM pillars which hang from their ends. There are two types of framework according to free light: if they have less than 5 m., they are flat 20 cms thick concrete slabs; if they have more than 5 m., they are ligth frameworks surfaces 50 cms. thick.

It is an artisan’s object, almost handmade.
We would like to design it on the plot itself.
In fact, that is what we will do.
Its modeled according to the demands of the surroundings, according to the most relevant geographical features.
It has no shape because it is not predefined. It will attain a shape along the way depending on the requirements.
It adapts to our hands…
At the moment, that is as far as it has gone.

Construction of two semidetached houses.

But, how many homes have two houses?

Maybe not just 2.

We like its in definition.

Are they are 6 houses, 4 or 2…?

We propose an ambiguous project in relation to size and number of homes. The houses are divided in compact volumes, with different sizes and heights.

Instead of the options of clearly delimiting the building into two volumes that correspond to two houses or making them into a single volume, we propose a combination of volumes, fragments of small houses, which create an architecture without scale. Each volume is built with one material only, on the exterior as well as the interior of the houses.

THREE EXTENDED HOUSES

We are going to extend over the ground as much as we can.

But we are able to generate more free space. Let us make houses on which we can walk, and cross them by all its sides.

The houses become broken, they look for the free space. They are full of fins, viewpoints, lines of vision...

An inner patio (another free space) associated to the stair, structures each house.

They are three extended houses.

It is a mixed typology between collective house and single house.

We propose a series of collective spaces like the COMMUNITY GARDEN, the SWIMMING POOL VIEWPOINT, the COMMUNITARY HALL and the GARAGE; and other private zones like the GARDEN AND THE PRIVATE TERRACES.

A system of inner and exteriors circulations allows a continuous relation between the new ground spaces and the house levels.

The ground floor is already not the only level in contact with the open space. From the cellar to the roof top, each level has its own outer free space.
The cellar with the bamboo patio.
The ground floor with the garden and the community hall.
The first level with the outer slope terrace.
The roof level with the private terraces, the swimming pool viewpoint and the community garden.

They asked for a ‘rustic house’, a house in the mountain.

And we had no idea what a ‘rustic house’ was. We had fragments of different images enter our heads, but none was complete. I remembered Erskine, an installment of a collection in the news kiosk: The Rustic House, the wooden porch, the slate roof, stone walls, and I do not what else…

Our proposal was to create a mountainous outline from parallel stripes that zigzag on a single line. A kind of ‘mountain house’.

A line that organizes the front and the back.

The back towards the north: outlined by a series of vegetable courtyards seeking privacy and light in relation to the different level of the street. The skin of stone changes in texture according to its location and completely covers the back of the house. The opaque skin is intertwined.
The front towards the south: some corbels generating large areas with glass walls on the ground floor creating porches and offering superb views of the reservoir glistening in the southern light.

These two different facades are covered by an almost flat covering of black slate, with gradients less than 8%, on which one could walk. Recognition of the traditional slate roofs in the surroundings, which have gradients higher than 20%. A place where snow accumulates and which can increase thermal inertia of the roof.

In short, a ‘mountainous house’.

‘M’ STUDIO
An existing house with a fabulous garden.
There is no space to grow.
It is a question of how we support it on the ground.
With only one leg, creating balance.
Rising over a Canary palm tree, looking out at a guava, watering a dracanea, smelling azaleas,...

One single section, with two large heads.

One leg-staircase-storage-shelf-toilet, with four spaces around it.

Two interiors: the studio and the classrooms and two exteriors: the access threshold and the reading porch.

A neutral space, gray, which is open to the light in the morning and the afternoon.

The rest is achieved with the paintings: the hanging paintings, the smell of turpentine, the colors of the oil paints,....

A studio with one leg.

We were commissioned to do a wedding gift. Not an object, but a place.
A place just for the two of them: a love house.
Hidden in a wooded area miraculously preserved in the heart of La Moraleja, in Madrid.
In the middle of a clearing we created the place simply with a curtain.
A translucent curtain that merges with the background, which receives a world of reflections and shadows. The Love House dissolves into its surroundings, multiplying with it.
It proposes an image in constant interaction with holm oaks, fir trees and rockroses.

The curtain in turn envelops the couple’s intimate space, almost like making out the continuous movements in the interior through a low mist: coming home, water, a reflection, undressing, the jacuzzi, the bedroom and the tree tops…
But not everything is continuous.
Hairy boxes enclose his or her most intimate part. They come out onto the façade, dripping with vegetation and bringing the wood into the house.
Everything in constant mutation. Transparencies, the sun, the reflections, the curtain