Tradition and innovation are the basis for this project, which features extreme simplicity in its organisation and rigorous traditional construction in its volume.
The only programme for this family house was a request by its owners: “That when we are outside we feel an overwhelming desire to be inside, and that when we are inside we cannot resist going outside”.
The house dominates the place discreetly, leaning into the natural slope next to the beautiful holm oaks and opening its eyes to the landscape and the city of Cáceres. From this dominant position, the house seeks to show respect for the natural-artificial environment, establishing formal and constructional links to the nearby surroundings and the historic centre.
In its attuned dimension, the house aims to be a palace for its users, affirming its noble character through the extreme simplicity of its organisation and a rigorous traditional construction in its volume.
On the outside the house thus reveals itself to be a simple prismatic volume with a square ground plan sixteen metres per side, with walls built from Cáceres quartzite stone. Each one of its sides has three window openings measuring two metres and ten centimetres, framed in granite stone from Extremadura in a warm hue.
The interior has nine cubic rooms measuring four metres and twenty centimetres per side which host the different uses of the house: living rooms, bedrooms, kitchen and dining room. All the server spaces such as wardrobes and bathrooms have been inserted between the rooms.
Each one of the nine rooms is built on two differentiated strata: a lower one shaped into a vessel made from oak wood boards, which holds all the installations for the house, and an upper stratum, a trough in white concrete in which no mechanism or lighting system will be installed. Each room opens to the outside via oak wood windows in a square proportion: the sliding windows in the wooden plinth, two metres ten per side, and the motorised windows inserted into the concrete structure, one metre and fifty centimetres per side.
At the back, framed by holm oaks and olive trees, is an open platform for outdoor living whenever the weather permits, with a small pond serving as a swimming pool in summer. On a lower level, accessed directly from the street, is the complementary programme of car parking, installations, storerooms, etc.
