Casa 360

Casa 360

CASA 360 described by Subarquitectura

A unique opportunity for us is in reality a problem that’s been posed thousands of times: to construct a house with a public programme of social relation, associated with the private life of a numerous family on a sloping plot of land with privileged views of the mountains outside Madrid. It has no one solution, there are many, they’re even catalogued in books about houses of a slope.

We try not to think of domestic spaces. On the contrary, we take as a point of reference works of engineering, motorway intersections, changes of direction. We proceed from generic solutions to the problem of descending, solutions that conceal great plasticity. We seek the poetic in all that seems to have been considered from the merely pragmatic point of view.

The result is the literal construction of a use diagram. In this instance, form does not follow function, but is instead function itself. Cyclical movement, routine and surprise turn into a way of living.

Its formal complexity offers the possibility of reaching all points of the house through two different routes, which multiply the possibilities of use and enjoyment. It has the form of a loop, 360º, like the shapes skaters make, like of gymnasts, as artistic as they are precise.

An extreme shape, the house is curved, generating the greatest quantity of linear meters towards the good views. It is shored up in the landscape and turns back on itself, completing the revolution. The degree of intimacy increases as the distance to the ends increases. At the midpoint, a mediatheque, isolated and completely dark, 100 % technology, 0 % landscape.

With a single gesture two ways of moving are generated: going down and looking outwards. The long house, a sinuous movement, a descent by ramp and ample turning radii tangential to the setbacks of the plot of land generate a panoramic vision. The short house, the quick way in a straight line, stairs of direct descent and a deep view towards the landscape.

A building that is black outside, absorbent, of slate, a material specific to the location, imposed as an aesthetic specification of the area. White inside, reflective, generic, neutral, and luminous. Life incorporates colour, outside with the vegetation and inside with the people.

Images by David Frutos Ruiz

Architects: asensio_mah & J.M.Aguirre Aldaz
Location: North of Spain
Project team: Diego Repiso, Jennifer Chuong, Kaizen Chen, Jon Aguirre
Construction managment: In collaboration with Satie Arquitectos S.L.
Structure: Egitur S.L
Project year: 2009
Photographs: Ricardo Loureiro

The house is a conscious exercise in developing an alternative domestic environment to the surrounding villas of the new suburban neighborhood. The solutions for the development so far have typically been compact villas located on abruptly leveled gardens, irrespective of the complex topographical condition of their sites. Our ambition for producing an alternative domestic atmosphere is developed by constructing a more explicit relationship between the house and garden with the existing conditions of the steep site. This organizational strategy for the house sought to register the difference in topography within the parcel by organizing a series of terraces that configure the framework for a landscape with differentiated characters. This deliberate geometric configuration affords multiple readings of the outline of the house while facilitating a rich experiential lifestyle within its volume and landscape. Specific organizational and material strategies were developed to produce different volumetric and perceptual readings that change with the different vantage points towards and within the house.

The house is clad in dark “composite” panels that have been customized with digital fabrication techniques. These customized panels are used to articulate sections of the house volume in order to introduce legibility to the overall form. These panels offer a range of different surface consistencies and patterns to the house that reflect the sites changing light conditions in multiple ways, producing an ever changing range of texture and tones.

via ArchDaily

Project: CFv01 House
Architect: Jon Tugores
Collaborators: Joan Anguita, Jaume Campmany, Helena Torres, Enrique Soriano, Belen Torres, Sergi Rodriguez, Mo Segura, Jordi Corbera,  Josep Xexu, Isidro Torregrosa, Jordi Andreu, Jouie Caden & Aoki Yakomizo
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Project: 2003
Built: 2008
Photography: Jordi Bernadó / Jon Tugores

When we were asked to design this house, we started in a slight margin to locate the building, because there was a previous project from another architect that started to remove part of the stone to build his house. As a great big hole had been paid for (and stone as you know is expensive to remove) we stayed at the exact point were the other architect left. Besides that issue our project was ab-initio. There was no reason to recycle the previous dreadful project. Believe me, it was heartbreaking.

Both our clients, a judge (her) and a aerospace engineer & also a commercial airbus pilot (him), went through our initial requests. Some questions we demand, we need, and that we ask every single client we have. We asked them: what do they want (not how), what do they do when they have nothing to do, how do they like light, we asked them to hand us a list with their last book they had read, their favourite film, life-experiences. And then we spend a day, from dusk till dawn with them, we ate, walked, communicated, everything towards gaining valuable information that would help us understand.

As seen on Archtracker