Project                                    1st. prize restricted competition. March 2003 – December 2006

Architects                                Victoria Acebo + Ángel Alonso

Collaborators                           Project director: Nuria Muruais

                                               Models&drawings: Alexandra Revelo, Keigo Kobayashi,

Structure engineer                   Alejandro Bernabeu NB35

Plot surface                              20.000 sqm

Total built surface                    1.400 sqm

Budget                                     1.350.000 euros

It places on a hill, dominating the sights; Madrid is 12 km. far (or close) but the nearest context is understood as "natural". It was a big house, and we wanted to make as small effect on the landscape as we could, but at the same time the landscape had to add a strong effect on the interior. No colors, no sinthetic or "artificial" materials, as low as possible; the "profile" of the house had to talk the language  of the place as one more of the lines in the horizon.

     foto: Luis Asín

 

So we let the horizontal scheme to modify .Topography  provoked to raise and to open a way, an invitation to enter. Other movements apply to adapt it to the topography that descends after the summit happens …We  modified the shape of the ground to stablish a new kind of dialogue between house and ground level. So we digged a very big platform and the lower space became the space among some bulky objects;  they were constructed with dull concrete to resemble the texture an color of the ground.

foto: Luis Asín

Spatial ergonomy (to form from inside). The spaces are organized througt its height depending on the importance and privacy of the areas. We studied every place and conditions of habitability, according to the activity that will happen in it (individual or collective) and the position of the inhabitant (lying, sitting, or standing). We try to form from inside through criteria of Ergonomics. The owner of this house is someone who works on the third environment, internet and the new technologies, and in his house there is a media room & working space from where the house and his business are managed.

     foto: aceboxalonso

foto: Luis Asín

Transcription of structural efforts. In Vars house we proposed that all the information that our structural engineer could give us about the efforts that give place to a variable thickness we were going to introduce them into the project. We were looking that the good observer is capable of reading its structural behavior in the same way as our geographer understand the forms of the nature, like the rolling stone transmits the information about the process that ended in its form ..,So we captured all the graphics from the computer and translated it into shapes, drawing all the different thickness to details and shaping the structure as an sculpture.