House on the Slope / Paisajes Emergentes

Architects: Paisajes Emergentes
Location: El Retiro, Antioquia, Colombia
Collaborators: Juan Carlos Aristizábal, Farid Maya, Erica Martínez and Sebastián Monsalve
Landscape: Paisajes Emergentes + Carlos Zapata
Structural Design: Jorge Aristizábal
Contractor: Gedesa
Project Area: 480 sqm
Project Year: 2007-2010
Photographs: Cristobal Palma

If we drew a line around the perimeter of the house we would obtain an irregular polyhedron with short straight lines, full of incisions and sudden turns.

The geometry only pretends to answer the question of how a house can be deformed by events occurring within the surrounding landscape, be they far or close to it. The operation was compatible with a particular request of the client: a clear division of interior spaces. These were finally connected through voids that separate but still permit a visual relation between them, as if they were smaller houses.

The dents in the volume were done with a careful consideration to both far and near events within the landscape, and so each hollow is unique and its form, location and proportion respond to that concern. Some of the thresholds face a distant view, while others show sections of the house itself, the old coniferous nearby wood or the Yarumo trees planted on the edges.

Within the living spaces the roof projects the section to the exterior. In the circulation areas there are voids of long or smaller sizes. In this case, conversely, the roof contracts the section.

To see more photographs of this project, please visit Cristobal Palma’s website