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Architects: Zwei Estudio Creativo
- Area: 522 m²
- Year: 2011
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Photographs:Javier Granda
Text description provided by the architects. A young couple and a privileged parcel in the middle of a rural core mark the starting points of this project.The beginning of this project goes through a complex analysis of the environment, starting with the surroundings directly affected by the town planning regulations and subsequently advancing to the surrounding environment, of which several singularities are valued. This analysis forces the stakeout of the existing limitations in the current regulations, with a preservative character and that determine completely the final shape of the housing. Therefore, a first decision in the project was ‘to quarantine’ several considerations of the legislation that didn’t seem to take into account the place. Nay its restrictions seemed to give way to a ‘non-place’, formulating answers based on the past to the present environment that, at the same time, turns empty and devoid of identity, an identity that, however, is recognized in the unbuilt surroundings.
Several considerations to which the own place is responding are joined to this starting point: orientations, relations with the nearby surroundings through linking spaces, the relation with the farther environment, integrating landscape contributions provided by the valley by including them as reflections in the facade,... With a simple composition of square volumes, of full and empty spaces, of transparencies and blind panels, of sequences and facade rhythms, of reflections and contrasts,... the house is responding sensitively to the site with an identity, with its own personality and according to the place it belongs.
In parallel, the need of energetic efficiency and sustainability is marked as one of the strengths of the project, trying to go one step ahead of the current legislation. Again limited by legal conditions, seriation, prefabrication and industrialization are discarded, using resources provided by the surroundings and by the very design of the spaces. The development line considers a project that optimizes bioclimatic/passive resources and that is able to be articulated clearly in the existing plot, organizing formally the building in volumes that groups functions according to their use.
Wood, stone block, working with thermal lag in walls, solutions that maximizes the use of the greenhouse effect, the reinterpretation of “trombre” wall, ... are some of the concepts we try to work in this project to develop a passive sustainability so, the house, through its final design, has thermo regulating capacity being able to retain heat in winter and to dissipate it in summer through the use of different resources and passive conditioning systems. Accordingly, the house should achieve its thermal comfort consuming as little energy as possible. As active energy response we choose to use a renewable energy covering 100% of the energy demand for hot water, heating and cooling, compared to the minimum standards imposed by the regulations.
