Embracing the Terrain: Architecture in Fluid Dialogue with Nature | ARCHITECTURE HUNTER

We had never done a project like this before. It was a hidden house. You're on the street and you only see the garden. The great challenge of doing a good project is precisely balancing technique with aesthetics and balancing well-being. It brought together the issue of the land being spectacular, beyond big, a special insulation. And the client. He said he wanted a house that wasn't too exposed to the street. That was his speech. I said, well, this is our dream, to have a client like you saying this. And on that same day, we sat down with the client and made the first sketches. And then we had a topographic there, we studied together, and it's curious that this first sketch came out very calm, right? And then he looked and said, well, that's it. It's not a small program. After the first drawing, the house was adjusting better to the program, but it's a big program. So at the ground level, we have four rooms. And we were wondering how we could distribute the other blocks, right? You leave the rooms to go to the living room, you go around a balcony, right? A more open, covered environment. This big balcony was as dry as possible. So I have this outdoor floor, a slab that holds the garden up there. When we slide this slab so that we have a continuity between the external garden and the internal garden, we ended up losing the solar orientation, which is the north face. And then we launched one of these voids that we have in the slab precisely for us to achieve this insulation. The inclinations were made due to the insulation, right? So there is one side that has a perfect inclination to the morning sun, the other room that takes a little north behind, but the façade is south. So you have a view to the south, protected with a large window too, but with a pleasant view. So when we're looking a lot inside, the interiors are very important too. It has a special condition, almost like a microclimate. It changes the floor, it changes the lining, there is a box inside this balcony. A lot of wood, we have a lot of fabric, different textures, that the interior design, together with the clients, managed to find different colors. So this counterpoint in architecture is very important, because if not, everything is very much the same. I think there is a pursuit to the well-executed detail, how the continuity of that pool will be with its surroundings. There is water there that has to perfectly overflow. We have a more curved design that passes this feeling of something delicate. We went to choose the pool stone and we came to the conclusion that a darker pool, even with a lighter floor, would work there. We see that the house is beautiful because it is alive. The change of the color of a panel, the vegetation, the way it is today. In the creative process, you have a feeling almost of a new passion. When you design, you have this. When you can come up with drawings that you have never done before, it is an experience. Each project is a research. We seek to reinvent ourselves, to make different projects. And in an original way, because families are different. If we do the same project, the same detail, I don't think it would feed us. The more mature it is, I think it will age, it will disappear more and more and it will get better and better to live. Go back to the house, see how it is today, see the landscaping, which has always been so important, and the coatings, how they are developing. This is a wealth. This is the coolest. You realize and look at the environment and not realize this architecture. I have a hell of a pleasure.