Mexican Modern House | MA House | Tepoztlán | Mexico | Cadaval and Sola-Morales

The project for the MA house responds to the search of a bright, wide and comfortable space built through a material that, at first, is hard and uncomfortable: the stone. With the presence of two major mountains on both sides of the plot, and two neighbors in the opposite direction, the house is a basic volumetric exercise: open the views and the main spaces to the mountains, and neglect the openings to the sides; and the definition of a central and open patio, a crack that defines the access of the house. However, this house doesn't behave as a standard patio-house: typically, those are built through a central space around which all the relations and circulations take place; the MA house, meanwhile, develops all the circulations at its outer perimeter. The house is a succession of spaces with differentiated uses that define the outer limit, a generic geometrical square. On top of such continuity of regular and perimeter circulations, the project overlays a second spatial strategy: the definition of a sequence of open and enclosed spaces; the exterior spaces -roofed patios-, intersect diagonally the volume and break with the rigidity of the perimeter performance......more

Spanish Modern House On The Hillslope | The X House | Barcelona | Spain | Cadaval & Sola-Morales

The house has two floors. The top floor, beyond incorporating a parking and allowing the access to the house, is conceived as a private suite of the owners - main room with closet and washroom/toilet, and spacious studio. On the lower floor there is a clear distinction between the front and the rear of the house. The front area has a totally open and public nature, comprised of a living area in a double high space next to a kitchen/dining room articulated around a significant marble table, 8m long. The rear part of the lower floor holds the rooms and service areas, through which the patios are given direct and protected views of the valley, the sea and the mountain.

The X House uses form to combine spaces of very different nature and provide them with an individual character, always incorporating landscape as the primary consideration. Beyond the effective spatial arrangement at the front of the house, the views are the protagonist in each space. Learning from Dan Graham's reflections, the image of the sea is always present when observing the mountain, and the mountain appears as a reflection when looking at the sea: a perceptive quality that enriches the experience of the house.......more

Cadaval + Sola-Morales | House at The Pyrenees, Canejan, Catalonia, Spain

A vernacular dry stone house in the Pyrenees and the aim to transform it into a comfortable and utilitarian second residence are at the origin of this project. Fathers and sons want separated homes but shared experiences.
The project elaborates on the physical connections between these two homes coexisting in a single rehabilitated envelope.
The programmatic scheme and the interrelations of spaces of both houses are tided up to these vertical connections.
What qualifies those spaces, however, is unique in each unit. The roof on the top unit is build up to be a sculptural yet neutral continuous element that resolves space, lighting, and views.
A human scale continuous linear window faces amazing views over the valley, while an identical window located on the top of the roof, enables to view the summit of the mountain. In the lower unit, a wide and off-scale opening will focus light, views, and therefore activity on an interior-exterior space.
The project is sympathetic of vernacular architecture by respecting not only the envelope, but also its construction and operational logics and its esthetics.
By preserving the envelope and doing a minimal yet contrasted intervention, the idea is to reinforce the historical values of vernacular architecture.
Moreover, the project is design to be sustainable. New technologies and old vernacular knowledge are implemented to make the Pyrenees houses two sustainable houses in an extreme climate.
More pictures here

TDA House, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, México | Cadaval and Sola-Morales

Where are the limits of materials? Are they in their apparently implicit properties or in our capacity to expand them?
A fresh house for extreme weather that surpasses the standard limits of comfort of the city-dweller; a low-cost house with minimum maintenance; a house for any number of habitants, flexible in its uses and configuration; a house that can open up completely to the exterior or close in on itself. A house which recycles almost all the remnant materials used for its built; a beach house that can be built in a distant corner of the world.
High temperatures, saltpeter, and unskilled labor force were the conditions to decide that this house should be built in concrete. Bridges, breakwaters and dams are also made out of concrete, because of its structural capabilities and its resistance to extreme conditions. This became the project's starting point, and the tectonic and morphological possibilities of the material followed on the formal definition of the proposal.
The section of the house, with its pronounced cantilevers, tries to take to the limit the structural and tectonic qualities of the building material, but above all tries to adapt the house to the specific conditions of its location. Three elements are defined for three different conditions: a tower volume which, in search of the sea, interrupts its opacity at strategic points until it achieves complete openness at the level where nothing blocks its views over the Mexican pacific ocean; a second bedroom volume suspended over the water and the wild flowers of the garden; and a third element built to be a wide, high, fresh central space which distributes and canalizes the different activities of the house. These three elements merge into a single volume of uncertain scale and rough textures.
However the outdoor built space, the threshold under the big cantilever, is the most important space of the house, its central focus. It has all the characteristics and potential of a tailor made interior: connected with the spacious central core of the house, protected by the balance and rigor of the constructed object but at the same time supplied with light, water, and air from the outside, close to the lush tropical vegetation and its colors that contrast with the neutrality of the concrete. All this, suspended in the hammocks, reinforces the solidity of the structure and the smoothness of the way of inhabiting it.
Is the way of living this interstitial space which defines the final architectural aim of the project: life in community, in the open air; a living portrait of the vital Mexican utopia, that is, a world of harmony, color, and nature, a reflection of the rocking of the hammocks and the pleasure of the dolce far niente.
Source:Cadaval and Sola-Morales

TDA House, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, México | Cadaval and Sola-Morales

Where are the limits of materials? Are they in their apparently implicit properties or in our capacity to expand them?
A fresh house for extreme weather that surpasses the standard limits of comfort of the city-dweller; a low-cost house with minimum maintenance; a house for any number of habitants, flexible in its uses and configuration; a house that can open up completely to the exterior or close in on itself. A house which recycles almost all the remnant materials used for its built; a beach house that can be built in a distant corner of the world.
High temperatures, saltpeter, and unskilled labor force were the conditions to decide that this house should be built in concrete. Bridges, breakwaters and dams are also made out of concrete, because of its structural capabilities and its resistance to extreme conditions. This became the project's starting point, and the tectonic and morphological possibilities of the material followed on the formal definition of the proposal.
The section of the house, with its pronounced cantilevers, tries to take to the limit the structural and tectonic qualities of the building material, but above all tries to adapt the house to the specific conditions of its location. Three elements are defined for three different conditions: a tower volume which, in search of the sea, interrupts its opacity at strategic points until it achieves complete openness at the level where nothing blocks its views over the Mexican pacific ocean; a second bedroom volume suspended over the water and the wild flowers of the garden; and a third element built to be a wide, high, fresh central space which distributes and canalizes the different activities of the house. These three elements merge into a single volume of uncertain scale and rough textures.
However the outdoor built space, the threshold under the big cantilever, is the most important space of the house, its central focus. It has all the characteristics and potential of a tailor made interior: connected with the spacious central core of the house, protected by the balance and rigor of the constructed object but at the same time supplied with light, water, and air from the outside, close to the lush tropical vegetation and its colors that contrast with the neutrality of the concrete. All this, suspended in the hammocks, reinforces the solidity of the structure and the smoothness of the way of inhabiting it.
Is the way of living this interstitial space which defines the final architectural aim of the project: life in community, in the open air; a living portrait of the vital Mexican utopia, that is, a world of harmony, color, and nature, a reflection of the rocking of the hammocks and the pleasure of the dolce far niente.
Source:Cadaval and Sola-Morales