CONTEXTO

The house's site is immersed in an orchard, filled with coffee shrubs, walnut and mango trees. Though a fairly large site, the house was to occupy a small area, and it was paramount for the project to be the less invasive as possible. The fruits produced by the orchard are meant to be collected by the community every harvesting season and enjoyed by everyone, so it was important that the house maintained the same spirit of collectivity that the site has been offering to the community that surrounds it. Amacueca is a rural, small town in the skirts of a mountain chain, devoted to agriculture. Its weather conditions are very special, a humid enclave near a dry lagoon and a high altitude forest. The rain season brings enormous amounts of water that washes down from the mountains, which require for irrigation canals to traverse most properties in the area. The fauna and flora are very rich and diverse too, the site houses bats, armadillos, flying squirrels, skunks, snakes, hummingbirds and hundreds of species of insects. All these life was to be taken into consideration since the house sits in the midst of this rich, dense and exuberant landscape.

ACTUACIÓN

The house is a retelling of the traditional courtyard house, growing around a piece of the orchard in a single storey layout, with open spaces that allow a constant relationship between indoors and outdoors. The elliptical footprint of the plan, dynamically shifting with setbacks and extensions along its looping axis, allows for the different parts of the program pieces to relate, while simultaneously preserving existing trees, opening visuals and modulating light with light-wells and windows. The body of the house seeks to mimic the context with its materiality, providing different atmospheres for gathering, rest or contemplation. Built exclusively with regional materials and local craftsmanship, the house is the result of a rich and constant dialogue and action between clients, architects and craftsmen, including a heavy dose of on-site decision making, improvisational drawing and design. Around the courtyard, an open-air promenade ties every part of the house together, framed by the rhythm of the colonnade that supports the wooden truss system for the roof. In addition, concrete elements are located as grafts in the supporting walls as elements that limit, support and confine enclosure elements, windows and alcoves. e gabled roof marked by the shape of the radial wooden trusses, allows enough height for a half-lit ceiling in every interior space, evoking the warm feeling of a cabin. At its lowest point in the tilting roof, it frames attention to the interior garden, a tamed piece of the orchard. A small, domesticated sample of the delightful garden that engulfs the house.