Silvia's blog: researching through architecture: Hiding and displaying at the same time

Wednesday, 27 November 2013

Hiding and displaying at the same time

Since the first stage of my design process, during this design studio in Winchester, I was wondering how I could manage to locate the garage in the best way possible. Saying this, I mean that wherever I put the garage it looks located in a wrong position. This could be because of the light: for example in my case, since the entrance is just one and I can't change it, the more directed place whould have been putting the garage in the south part of the site. But in this way I can't locate places like the living room, dining room and kitchen in the south. So, why don't you locate it in the north part, giving up in having a direct access to the garege? I tried but in this way I was covering the most interesting and nice view from the site. The other problem was that I didn't want to make the family living in this house watching the car passing through the garden and stopping in front of them.

At the same time, analyzing more deeply the landscape of the site, I was trying to use and take the most from it, not only to link the building to this place and only this one, but also to obtain what I rally wanted for the house itself.

At the stage of my process I manage to find a possible solution looking among a lot of projects, even with totally different kinds of landscape and the MAVA's house by Gubbins Architects, together with the last project that I have described in the last post, helped me a lot.

SOURCE: http://europaconcorsi.com/projects/221463-Gubbins-Arquitectos-Casa-Mava

Pablo Montecinos

Like it can be seen from the picture, the architects of this project did a sort of loggia for the entrance of the house, composed by two volumes. This entrance hosts the cars park and allow to hide them due to the presence of what looks like a massive volume just above it. The truth is that what we see like wood panels are not walls but work like a balustrade for the beatiful view to the sea. And even the wood paviment above the entrance makes the light come trough it. Just beside the open garage there is the entrance so it is quite hidsen and protected from winds and different waether conditions.

Despite the site is totally different from the kind of forest in which I'm designing the family house I was thinking to use the same kinds of materials that they used here: concrete and wood. Concrete because I think that it's the best for this kind of building related to different slopes and trees roots that can always contact the walls and push them. And the wood because, for me, it creates again a sort of junction with nature.