Building a Complete Survival Mini House with dead wood pin needles rocks and clay.

Finca Toluca sits so gently in the Corumban Valley. It's a tranquil, sensitive house. One of the long boundaries has a creek the whole way along it. I noticed when we were here that the creek had this quiet stillness, this sense of power, and I thought if we can take any of those kind of atmospheric qualities into the house, then that was the way. I'm Harley Graham, director of HGA Studio and we're at Finca Toluca. So the plan of the house was conceived as a cruciform and it is allowing the main living space to step down towards the creek views with the double height living space, the sunken living room moving up to the dining and then kitchen behind that. The bedroom wings come off perpendicular to this. So in one sense the plan is quite rigid and then what we did, it was like once again being influenced by the creek, was peeling these bits off it. So we have the strong cruciform plan and then the day beds peel off in these angular moments to create these fun interesting spaces off the plan. The roof peels up in the living space so we get this beautiful morning light into the kitchen. The north light floods the house in winter through these sort of dappled curtains and beautiful trees. So starting off with rigidity and slowly pulling it apart. Rambeth walls are the primary component of the design. They form a series of spine walls that sequentially layer almost like deposited silt back from the creek and they actually increase in density the further you move back from the creek and the closer you move to the street. So it forms a privacy gradient and sort of cloisters the house as you come away from the outside. Pallet of hardwood timber, lime wash cement render over the walls and floors and then the hero which is the rammed earth create the most interesting earthiness I think we've had so far in the houses we've designed. Really the house has this sense that you are really living in this warm chocolate nougat dessert. You know there's certainly a sense that the 70s are coming through here. Colours and the textures really add to this atmosphere of just a place that feels like an old baseball mitt that you can fall asleep in. The fold in the main living space is one of the big features of the steelwork. We have the roof just fork open without any structural support and that gets this beautiful northern light. These shards of light which come into sort of darker parts of the home and make sure that these richer materials have this play of light moving across it. It's what introduces a lot of the dynamic feel to the house and the engineering involved by Westero Partners to pull this off was absolutely incredible. So we have this theme of the rough, the cracked, the you know the natural and then as a total counterpoint to it we have this precision, this sleekness, this floating linearity and the two of them don't come together in a way that I think is quite unique that is very much the hallmark style of Finca Toluca. We are really excited about the combination of these two elements and I think it's a perfect match for the site and a good representation of the client's desire to create something truly special. What's been created here is something far beyond HGO Studio. This house really is about the whole team from mat tech builders to lark landscape and mosh joinery. Something really special has been created here and we're so proud to be a part of it.