Loé House / Eduardo Martín Martín + Olympia Martín Gómez arquitectos asociados

Curated by Clara Ott

Architects: Eduardo Martín Martín, Olympia Martín Gómez arquitectos asociados
Area: 215 m²
Year: 2020
Photographs:Javier Callejas
Manufacturers: AutoDesk, ANDEMOY GRANADA SL, COMACRIS SCA, MADERAS ALFONSO SA, PARQUET PAVISUELOS SL

"The challenge of architecture today is to understand the rural world" Rem Koolhaas The project supports the renovation of a dwelling in nature consisting of three pavilions and the creation of a new pavilion as a "connected office". The main objective is to convert it into a house that meets the housing needs that the recent pandemic has shown to be lacking, to adapt it to its current living situation, to improve energy efficiency... and to enrich the quality of life of the owners. The origin of the house was the transformation of an old shed. The functional needs forced successive extensions and the resource exhibited gravitated to leave the wooden building free-standing, for its uniqueness.

New buildings were proposed, not competing with the original, creating changing passages, folded to nature, connected by the thickened party wall. Each pavilion erects different architectures. "Nature becomes landscape when man frames it" Le Corbusier. Architecture of simple lines that respects nature, with a marked horizontality and borrowing the landscape. Configured by four scattered pavilions that are looking for the relationship with nature. They are wrapped and protected by the existing trees on the farm "disparate natural landscapes", looks into the depths of the Vega, is committed to the landscape. It is located on a plot of 1000m2, in Granada. The visual limit is established by the white peaks of the Sierra Nevada. Vega: horizontal landscape of great extension, fragmented by poplar crops and isolated buildings. The landscape changes with time, the passing of the seasons, the variations of the climate, the difference in crops. The house embraces the existing trees, because of their age they are sculptures in the landscape. The layout folds to them, protects the buildings, makes them sustainable using nature as a base technology. Courtyards are founded in each pavilion, the exterior is medicine for the users.

The dividing wall widens (80cm) on the inside to house the gallery that leads to the pavilions. The pavilions appear in the house by fascination, associated with disparate landscapes. The gallery is the threshold, the place where memories are erased and allows access to new ones. Experiences and perceptions that establish in the architectural space an emotional influence. Four buildings; wooden, (bedrooms), time has acted and its color is that of the trees, glass (living room), open is the porch of the garden, a large walnut tree shelters it, reflective, immersed in a poplar grove, perceives its magnitude enlarged (kitchen), sheltered (office), allows work at home, on line, requested by the pandemic.

The dividing wall in its interior is a gallery in semi-darkness. The bowels of a brick wall, which is inhabited to connect, creating a threshold to surprise with the heteroclite landscape of each pavilion. It erects variables the relationship between the buildings and the nature. It is sheltered on floating platforms (bedrooms), the limit disappears (living), submerged in the forest (kitchen), or protected under a century-old elm (office). It sets up a place where every day is exciting to live and quiet to think.