Hasta La Ideas

This stark concrete house in Spain by Alcolea+Tárrago Arquitectos features richly stained timber shutters that fold back to reveal large glass doors (+ slideshow).

Located in the town of Sesma, Casa MP is home to a family of four, made up of a young couple and their two daughters. It was conceived by Pamplona studio Alcolea+Tárrago Arquitectos as “a monolithic volume that emphasises its archetypal geometry using concrete and stained pinewood.”

The dark timber detailing creates a distinct contrast with the muted grey of the concrete and was added as a reference to local architecture. It frames a series of recessed windows and is also used for doors and furnishings inside the house.

The concrete was formed against timber and its surface shows the rough grain of the wooden boards.

The house is at the peak of the sloping and takes advantage of views of the surrounding fields. This position allows room for a two-car garage to one side, as well as a rear garden where residents can plant vegetables.

The main entrance to the house is through a three-metre-wide terrace that can be screened from the street using a translucent sliding screen.

An open-plan living room and kitchen occupies the entire ground floor to create a space for working and relaxing, while four bedrooms are located upstairs and a multi-purpose room and storage area are in the basement.

Other recently completed houses in Spain include a residence in Alicante with an 18-metre-long balcony and an X-shaped concrete house near Barcelona.

Photography is by Iñaki Bergera.

Here’s a project description from Alcolea+Tárrago Arquitectos:

The commission began in a private competition, in which our office was selected not by a particular project, but by the attitude showed to the clients to build a maximum house with a very small budget on a complicated plot, a very sharp slope. And not least, the involvement and commitment, perhaps beyond any logical reason, to propose successive approximations to the project (up to five preliminary projects and a full executive project with its visa) before the final solution.

Anyway, the program answers common needs of a conventional home for a young couple with two young daughters, including a garage for two cars and a small garden and orchard. It is a monolithic volume that emphasizes its archetypal geometry using concrete and stained pinewood. Any gesture is made to the better orientation and views, and to clear the plot as much as possible for the small garden and orchard to plant some vegetables and fruit trees.

The house, therefore, is set at the highest level of the site. It follows a restrictive regulation on alignment and height. But this also permits to dominate the southern view towards the grain fields and smooth foothills of the River Ebro.

Following similar strategies, the two car garage is separated from the main volume to close the north limit. Between the house and the garage, there is an entrance and patio access three meters wide. Large sliding doors in pine board communicate the garage and garden.

The ground floor of the house is linked to the garden through large windows. A single space includes the living, kitchen and a place for leisure and work. Four bedrooms, two bathrooms and a laundry room are in the upper floor. In the basement there is a multipurpose space, facilities and storage rooms.

The building details in reinforced concrete unify structure, finishing and texture, and control the total budget. The windows have shutters in stained pine board, very common in the folk architecture of the area.

The thermal inertia of the concrete volume as well as an underfloor heating and cooling system using geothermal energy determines a high efficiency in a quite extreme climate, very cold in winter and very hot in summer, without resigning to large windows for a maximum use of natural light. A very small local construction company owned by a family friend and local subcontractors carried out the construction. And explains the delay of the execution process.

Above: site plan – click above for larger image

Above: basement floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: first floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: section – click above for larger image

Above: north elevation – click above for larger image

Above: south elevation – click above for larger image

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Alcolea+Tárrago Arquitectos appeared first on Dezeen.

Portuguese studio Aires Mateus has transformed a house in Portugal into a bright white building with a sprawling extension (+ slideshow).

The three-storey house is located in Alcobaça, a Portuguese city dominated by the presence of a twelfth century monastery, and it occupies a large irregularly shaped site on the edge of the river Dull.

Aires Mateus upgraded and extended an existing residence and made every surface inside and outside of the house white, allowing it stand out amongst the brown and pink tones of the surrounding local architecture.

The new windows appear as narrow vertical slices. Some of them overlap the white-painted frames that housed the windows before the renovation and each one is sunken into a deep recess, revealing the thickness of the exterior walls.

Residents enter the house on the middle floor, where a staircase leads up and down towards either a top floor mezzanine or a lower floor living room.

A curved skylight punctures the roof overhead and projects a teardrop-shaped splash of light onto the walls of the stairwell.

Another curved opening leads from the living room to the rooms of the expansive extension, where a kitchen, a dining room and three bedrooms are spaced out around a series of small square courtyards.

Storage closets are contained inside each of the thick walls that separate the rooms.

The L-shaped garden wraps around the edge of the house and is bounded by the chunky white perimeter walls.

Aires Mateus is a Lisbon-based architectural studio led by Manual and Francisco Aires Mateus. Past projects include a nursing home in Alcácer do Sal and houses with sandy floors that were exhibited for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010.

See more Portuguese houses on Dezeen, including a house in Lisbon with bushy plants on its facade.

See more architecture in Portugal »

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Above: lower ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: upper ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: top floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: cross section – click above for larger image

Above: long section – click above for larger image

Above: rear elevation – click above for larger image

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by Aires Mateus appeared first on Dezeen.

Board-formed concrete walls mirror the grained texture of timber screens at this hillside house in Chile by Santiago-based Gubbins Arquitectos.

The building is formed of two separate halves that nestle against the landscape at different levels, separating the main family house from a guesthouse further down the hill.

A large wooden deck stretches out between the two structures, forming an extension of the open-plan living room and kitchen. “The main strategy was to create a big terrace,” explains Gubbins Arquitectos. “The terrace extends towards the ocean, removing the view of the existing houses.”

The deck sits over the roof of the guesthouse in front, allowing a sheltered parking area to slot in underneath.

The residence is made of up several concrete walls and volumes, which protrude both horizontally and vertically to create a composition of overlapping blocks. “The architecture of the two longitudinal volumes makes the space decompose and fold into a series of slabs and beams,” explain the architects.

Timber screens surround the upper terrace, forming a horizontal band that sits flush against the concrete.

Above: photograph is by Pedro Gubbins

Stairs lead down from the main house to the car park below, creating a sheltered route between the two halves of the building.

The main house contains just one ensuite bedroom, while three more are contained on the lower level.

Other residences to recently complete in Chile include an earthquake-proof house with glass walls and a tiered hillside house with panoramic Pacific views. See more architecture in Chile.

Above: photograph is by Pedro Gubbins

Photography is Pablo Montecinos, apart from where otherwise stated.

Above: photograph is by Pedro Gubbins

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Casa Mava

Casa Mava is placed in the “Beranda” urbanization, which is located in between Cachagua’s and Maitencillo’s spas in Chile. The location is on a really strong slope, with a radical sight to Pacific Ocean. It is exposed to south-west winds.

The main strategy was to create a big terrace, creating this “new floor” that would allow for “leisure life” and make the ocean sight even more perceptible, offering a unique relationship between the inhabitant and the horizon line, the same way that the cliffs do.

The terrace extends towards the ocean, removing the view of the existing houses. The program decomposes into “two units”. This allows it to get in touch with the ground in the proper way, and provides the architectonical support for the terrace.

Southward, there is a big metal and wood “beam-wall” that allows to delimit the view and take over the south-west winds in the place, and the future neighbours. Under it, a new place is created. Here is the entrance to the house, the relationship between both houses and a place sheltered from the sun.

The architectural promenade is complete when you get into a courtyard which is opened to the sky and from where you access the terrace. Both houses develop their inner promenades perpendicular to the slope, involving all the interior rooms of the site.

The architecture of the two longitudinal volumes makes the space decompose and fold into a series of slabs and beams that allows big distances between supports without soiling the ocean view. Furthermore, it helps to protect the house from the west sun.

Above: photograph is by Pedro Gubbins

The materiality is composed by reinforced seen concrete walls, aluminium windows, double glazing and wood beams. The temperature and atmosphere created by these materials offers a complete integration with the ground and vegetation of the area.

Above: ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: first floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: roof plan – click above for larger image

Above: section one – click above for larger image

Above: section two – click above for larger image

Above: section three – click above for larger image

Above: section four – click above for larger image

Above: section five – click above for larger image

Above: north elevation – click above for larger image

Above: east elevation – click above for larger image

Above: south elevation – click above for larger image

Above: west elevation – click above for larger image

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Gubbins Arquitectos appeared first on Dezeen.

The lower floor of this long narrow house by Dutch studio 123DV is mostly buried beneath two grassy mounds (+ slideshow).

123DV started with a level site but were obligated to make the ground less fertile before commencing construction, so they removed the top layer of the soil and used it to form two mounds around the volume of the new house.

“We though we should use the soil,” architect Jasper Polak told Dezeen. “This was for us an opportunity to surprise the client and make a mark. By creating two hills, we had an anchor point for the house on the vast flat plot and we could raise it up to create a maximum view.”

Named Bridge House, the two-storey residence has its upper level on the peak of the hills, while the lower storey is submerged and only revealed in the gap between the two slopes.

This opening is wide enough to accommodate an entrance at the front, as well as a second door and garage at the back of the building.

Living rooms and bedrooms are all located on the upper floor and include a large lounge and dining room with glazed walls on two sides.

The house was designed to be self-sufficient and generates its own power and heating using geothermal energy storage and solar panels. Water is sourced from a private well and rainwater is collected and reused where possible.

Other houses recently completed in the Netherlands include a residence with an exterior staircase and a timber-clad houseboat.

Photography is by Christiaan de Bruijne.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

A landscape full of surprises

The roads are lined with wildflowers. In summer, purple and yellow loosestrife are in bloom. Timber-framed farmhouses, enclosed meadows, ancient fields, and wonderful oak trees with their thick trunks turn your thoughts to days long gone.

This villa is set in a newly developed estate in the unique, tree-lined landscape of the Dutch Achterhoek, where unexpected scenes of rural beauty are always just around the bend.

Above: lower floor plan – click above for larger image

In front of the house and its setting is a wide-open space that stylishly frames the park, most of which is open to walkers. The park, in turn, blends into the landscape around it.

Above: upper floor plan – click above for larger image

The landscape architect for this project carefully restored the property to its original state, with rows of trees throughout the landscape like theatrical sets. To make the soil less fertile, the top layer was removed throughout the property. In the interest of sustainability, this soil was reused to form a raised area beneath the house. The result is a traditional Dutch terp dwelling, a house on top of a hill that contains the cellar.

Above: long section – click above for larger image

Sustainability also inspired the design of the house. The villa is self-sufficient. At any time, the occupants can go off the net without losing their energy supply. Water is drawn from a private well, and the practical and sustainable built-in features include solar panels, roof and floor heating through thermal energy storage, reuse of rainwater, a septic tank, shielded power cables, and Heat Mirror glass. This unique glass acts as an efficient and environmentally friendly awning, cooling the house and keeping out excess heat.

Above: front elevation – click above for larger image

Above: side elevations – click above for larger image

Above: rear elevation – click above for larger image

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by 123DV appeared first on Dezeen.

This X-shaped house by architects Cadaval & Sola-Morales hangs over the edge of a hillside on the outskirts of Barcelona (+ slideshow).

Aptly named X House, the two-storey residence is based on a simple rectilinear form but features four triangular recesses that create the X-shaped plan. One of these recesses allows the structure to avoid a nearby tree, while two others provide windows that avoid overlooking neighbouring houses and the fourth lengthens the glazed facade to offer a wider view of the surrounding landscape.

“The form is not a priori, but an effort to give a unitary response that satisfies each of the questions that rose up in the design process,” explains Cadaval & Solà-Morales.

The walls without glazing appear as solid, undecorated concrete and were set using a single-sided formwork. “[The house] accumulates in its skin the diverse and continuous knowledge acquired within the process of construction,” say the architects.

Above: photograph is by Iwan Baan

Residents enter the house on the top floor by following a staircase around the edge of the pine tree and locating a door that is two metres below street level, alongside a garage for parking two cars.

Above: photograph is by Iwan Baan

A bedroom, bathroom and study occupy two arms of the cross on this floor and overlook a double-height living room on the storey below.

Above: photograph is by Iwan Baan

Downstairs, the living room and kitchen wrap around the facade to offer views out across over the hillside.

“X House uses form to qualify spaces of very different nature and provide them with an individual character, always incorporating landscape as a main actor,” add the architects.

Photography is by Sandra Pereznieto, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s some more information from Cadaval & Solà-Morales:

The Power of Form

The X House project aims to solve by the definition of a system, language, or even through a unique form, a number of inquiries that rise up when we read the specific given site: how to protect and give protagonism to an impressive pine, that is located on the top of the site, and that makes access and approximation to the house extremely complex from the street; how to avoid deciding between the views to the sea and those to the mountains, and allow both visions in opposite directions; how to neutralize through form the presence of the contiguous constructions, to build up a fake isolation that denies the neighbours; how to double the main views, permitting quality frontal views from the front and the rear of the house; how to resolve so many a priories with a simple movement that answers to all of the previous aims without prioritizing nor explicitly formulating a response to any of them.

Above: photograph is by Iwan Baan

The form, a unique form, is the result of a long process of search of individual answers to each of those challenges; thus, the form is not a priori, but an effort to give a unitary response that satisfies each of the questions that rose up in the design process. The X House is also a constructive exploration: a technique regularly used for the infrastructural construction such as bridges and tunnels, is here developed to meet the architectural scale, aiming to incorporate efficiency, and reduction of costs to the construction.

Above: photograph is by Iwan Baan

The use of a mixed technique based on the application of a high-density concrete allows projecting the material at a high pressure to a single-sided formwork, and to acquire high structural resistance in extremely short periods of time. Thus, it is possible to project continuous 6m high walls without the need to use a two-sided formwork (which would be the regular construction procedure). The house is therefore a living expression of the specific technique, and accumulates in its skin the diverse and continuous knowledge acquired within the process of construction.

The house is located on the upper part of a hill in Cabrils, in the outskirts of Barcelona. The site, with remarkable views and an important slope, is accessed from a single street located at the top of the site. The location of the house within the site responds to the aim to minimize excavation and optimize, within possible, the use of the non-occupied land.

Above: photograph is by Iwan Baan

The access to the house is two meters depressed from the street, and the project searches to empathise through the use of blank walls the desire to be anchored in the site and to disappear from the street; the project clearly prioritizes the façades and views overseeing the valley.

Above: photograph is by Iwan Baan

The house has two floors. The top floor, beyond incorporating a parking and allowing the access to the house, is conceived as a private suite of the owners: main room, with dresser and washroom / toilet, and spacious studio. In the lower floor there is a clear distinction between the front and the rear of the house; the front part has a totally open and public nature, build up with a living area in a double high space next to a kitchen-dining room articulated around a significant marble table, 8m long.

Above: photograph is by Iwan Baan

The rear part of the lower floor holds the rooms and service areas, which through the patios are given direct and protected views to the valley, the sea and the mountain.

Mainly, the project of the X House uses form to qualify spaces of very different nature and provide them with an individual character, always incorporating landscape as a main actor. Beyond the effective spatial arrangement at the front of the house, the views are the protagonist in each space. And learning from Dan Graham’s reflections, the image of the sea is always present when observing the mountain, and the mountain appears as a reflection when looking at the sea: a perceptive quality that enriches the experience of the house.

Above: photograph is by Iwan Baan

Name of the project: X House
Name of the Office: Cadaval & Solà-Morales
Project: Eduardo Cadaval & Clara Solà-Morales

Above: photograph is by Iwan Baan

Collaborators: Bruno Pereira, Pamela Diaz De Leon, Daniela Tramontozzi, Manuel Tojal Building Engineering: Joaquin Pelaez
Structural Engineering: Carles Gelpi.
Construction Company: TOPCRET constructions

Location: Cabrils, Barcelona, España
Area: 300sqm
Date: Project: 2009. Construction 2012

Above: site plan

Above: upper floor plan

Above: lower floor plan

Above: front elevation

Above: side elevation

Above: rear elevation

Above: side elevation

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Cadaval & Solà-Morales appeared first on Dezeen.