- Area: 6975 ft²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Juan Serrano
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Manufacturers: Accesorios y Acabados, Best Life Tecnology , Concremovil, Diaco, Ecoenergy, Etalum, Hunter Douglas
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Architect Designer: Fernán Olarte Pinto
Text description provided by the architects. The project is located in La Mesa de Ruitoque, the town of Floridablanca in the department of Santander. La Mesa de Ruitoque is 7km south of the Bucaramanga plateau and has tropical weather with temperatures oscillating between 20° and 27°c. This is a privileged location with views of the inside of the mountains from the north, and the city of Bucaramanga from the south, providing a full view of this beautiful landscape.
The idea was to initially build a family country house in a lot with a high slope of 1997 m2. This proposal was altered due to the COVID-19 pandemic when the client decided to make the project their residential home. This changed the first plan, but we kept the open architecture concept that had been initially proposed.
The program is mainly developed in two stories distributed as follows:
The entrance is generated through a series of yards that articulate the parking area and the access ways to the house. You enter the house through a yard that ends in a concrete wall, from which a water mirror emerges that is generated by rain. Perpendicularly to this wall, a lattice indicates the access, allowing a peek of the home and the landscape in the back.
The volume of the first floor is a rectangular prism, developed parallelly to the landscape in the highest part of the land, profiting from the privileged view of the city and the mountains far away. This volume holds inside the service areas and outside the common areas. From these, the terrace and pool area unfold and become a lookout for the natural surroundings of the land and the distant landscape.
In the natural surroundings of the land, a series of pathways allow you to arrive at the family shelter, a small wooden cabin in the middle of the forest. From these pathways, too, you can access the technical and guest areas that are located below the viewpoint platform.
The second floor can be accessed from a set point surrounded by vegetation and lit by a marquee. This volume holds the private area: on one side, the main bedroom is surrounded by a terrace overlooking the city articulated through the living room with a perpendicular volume to the main one in which 3 secondary bedrooms are integrated by a perimetral terrace that binds it to the landscape of La Mesa de Ruitoque. From the second floor, one can access the green shed. There’s where the solar panels are located, that supply the house with energy and a lookout with a panoramic view.
The architectural proposal can be defined as two pure rectangular volumes arranged in an L shape, surrounded by vegetation that contrasts with the concrete, the exterior material of the house. On the inside of the house, the wood predominates and integrates with the gardens that were designed according to the spaces. These tend to generate transparencies that, thanks to the house’s setup, get involved with the outdoor landscape.
