(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects

(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Exterior Photography(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Exterior Photography(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Interior Photography(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Interior Photography(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - More Images+ 24

Sierra Oeste, Spain
  • Team: Diego Barajas, Camilo García, Aníbal Arenas, Almudena Tenorio, Giulia Poma, Álvaro Heredia, Agustina Zaratiegui, Iván Parra, Natasa Lekkou, Raquel Herrera.
  • Landscape: Fábrica de texturas, Aristides Mettas, Marta Amírola, Petra Sebova, Jeronime Doise, Daniel Prieto, Elena Taliano, Elena del Cura
  • Textiles: Candelas, Pepo Ruiz
  • Client: Esta casa es para Diego, uno de los arquitectos de este proyecto, su pareja y su familia
  • Text: Camilo García, Diego Barajas
  • Translation: Medina Whiteman
  • City: Sierra Oeste
  • Country: Spain
More SpecsLess Specs
(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Exterior Photography, Wood
© Luis Díaz Díaz

This project is located in a housing development in the Western Sierra of Madrid. Set within a pine forest, next to a SPA (Special Protection Area) for birds, it forms part of a biodiversity-rich area that is currently under threat. The project consists of a socio- bioclimatic, multifunctional cabin for a migrant couple and their extended family, as well as other, small animal architectures based around one insect that has become a defining agent in this ecosystem: the pine processionary moth. Together these make up a micro-landscaping and architecture project for humans and other animal species in which alternative ways of inhabiting this place are explored from a care perspective.

(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Exterior Photography
© Luis Díaz Díaz
(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Image 22 of 29
Site plan and residential area plan
(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Exterior Photography
© Luis Díaz Díaz

Human Architectures. The main volume of the cabin is a small, prefabricated structure, framed with eleven pieces of pinewood from Soria, about 250 km from the site. It was designed to reduce the energy used in the construction and during its useful life. The layout considerably expands its uses, allowing two people to telework and comfortably accommodate guests. This is achieved by rethinking the interior spaces: the master bedroom is replaced by a sleeping capsule, the roof is used as an outdoor raised living room, and a transformable, multi-use office can be used as a guest bedroom or dining room.

(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Exterior Photography
© Luis Díaz Díaz
(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Image 28 of 29
Plan - Ground floor
(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Exterior Photography, Garden
© Luis Díaz Díaz

The heart of the dwelling is a kitchen-living room with 4m of headroom. A horizontal window high up on the south face allows winter sun in since the plot lies on the north face of a hill. On the opposite face, there are sliding glass doors, and an elevated porch surrounded by netting that prevents accidental falls and birds flying into the glass – a significant danger for birds.

(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Interior Photography, Kitchen, Wood
© Impresiones Cotidianas
(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Image 26 of 29
Multi-use office
(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Interior Photography, Bedroom, Bed, Wood
© Impresiones Cotidianas
(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Interior Photography
© Impresiones Cotidianas

The outdoor-living room-garden is equipped with a hammock, a movable piece of wooden decking, and a screen used as a summer cinema and for family video calls. Despite being outdoors, this living room offers intimacy due to a porous membrane around the perimeter composed of wood offcuts. Its shades of Jacaranda mimosifolia purple recreate imaginary fragments of landscapes in South America – where both the tree and the cabin’s residents are from – bringing those landscapes into dialogue with those of Madrid. As well as offering privacy, this membrane also provides representation for this non-heteronormative, transnational family.

(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Interior Photography
© Luis Díaz Díaz

Synanthrolove Architectures. This naturally rich ecosystem currently suffers from serious imbalances. One of the actions that are harmful to the biodiversity of the forest is fumigation to reduce overabundant species, as this affects the related species and also other species indirectly. Perhaps the most common and worrying example of this here is the use of insecticides to reduce the population of the pine processionary moth. Rather than attempting to exclude it from the ecosystem, and understanding it as an inhabitant of the forest, one alternative is comprehensive forest care, including biological control by encouraging biodiversity and caring for the moth’s predators. The current scarcity of predators is partly to do with prevailing forestry practices, which discourage the presence of older, larger trees and dead tree trunks, whose hollows are used as nests by numerous animals.

(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Interior Photography
© Luis Díaz Díaz
(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Interior Photography
© Impresiones Cotidianas

We have designed a micro-landscape of architecture on this plot to provide nesting boxes and refuges for various species of birds and bats, many of which feed on the pine processionary moth. These are adaptations of the essential, though marginal, work of some of our neighbours, as well as nearby associations of biologists and other environmental activists.

(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Exterior Photography, Garden
© Luis Díaz Díaz
(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Image 27 of 29
Plan - 1st floor
(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Exterior Photography, Deck
© Impresiones Cotidianas

The (Synanthro)Love Shack is a continuation of a series of works through which we explore architecture’s ability to weave alternative relationships with environments both near and far; with those that already exist, and with future environments that can be imagined now.

(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Exterior Photography, Wood
© Impresiones Cotidianas
(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Image 29 of 29
Entomophagous cavity-inhabiting species
(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects - Exterior Photography, Aerial View Photography
© Luis Díaz Díaz

Project gallery

See allShow less
About this office
Cite: "(Synanthro)Love Shack, (Tele)working Abode / Husos Architects" [Cabaña del (sinantro)amor, morada del (tele)trabajo / Husos Architects] 21 Jan 2021. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/955376/synanthro-love-shack-tele-working-abode-husos-architects> ISSN 0719-8884

© Impresiones Cotidianas

远程工作的爱意小屋,关照微环境 / Husos Architects

You've started following your first account!

Did you know?

You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.