photos: Roberto Ercilla – Miguel Ángel Campo.
The Roman God Janus,
after whom the month of January was named, was the God of beginnings
and transitions. He is usually depicted as having two faces, looking in
opposite directions towards the beginning and the end.
This house reminds me of this depiction. On the one side
it is part of a luxury housing estate and clearly fits that category,
whilst on the other hand it faces an industrial site and so takes ideas
for its form from that view.
The architects see this as a critique of the
unsatisfactory nature of the luxury housing round about, but a case
could be made that the design provides a penetrating insight into a
sense of unease about the site and the neighbours.
The house, located in Uleta Spain and
completed in 2002 is surrounded by a high fence. Most of the house is
top lit via a series of rooflights set in a sawtooth roof. On the ground
floor there are large glazed windows looking over the terrace but
generally the house is inward facing.
The interior it is light and white, full of Modernist
simplicity with a touch of heroism! But on the outside it appears
demure, toned down using simple timber cladding.
We are told that the final result is an apparently ironic comment on some house designs the architects Roberto Ercilla – and Miguel Ángel Campo do not like.
: on 03.11.13
House in Uleta
This isolated single family home, located in a
luxury estate, reflects architecture's failure to give solutions for a
"comprehensible" interpretation of the location.
The house, located on the borders of the
estate, takes on the industrial landscape opposite. It uses a very
efficient section type that allows the fulfilment of all of the client's
initial requirements: privacy and light.
A small industrial container is manipulated,
modifying the section to fit in the rooms of the upper floor without
altering the unitary interpretation of the space.
Going through the threshold, the house's
apparent hermetecism becomes a cascade of light. The interior is white
and well-lit, the outside dark and hermetic, toned down by using wood.
The final result speaks ironically of the
achievements of a certain domestic architecture, further suggesting the
ambiguity between the interior and exterior.
ArquitectosRoberto Ercilla - Miguel Ángel Campo
