The design proposed by Patricia Meneses avoids confronting the territory and instead adopts a dialogue with nature. Taking the idea of creating a plant waterfall, the project pays attention to light, to the way in which rainwater flows from the top of the hillside and treats the house as a connecting link between the mountains and the city.
In the Meneses project, the compact volumetry of the neighbouring houses is rearticulated as a program of several pavilions that rise along an ascending path, respecting the land's topography and creating a conversation with a garden of natural, diverse vegetation, an organic hybridisation with the territory.
Circulation stands out as one of the central ideas of this work. Through a symbolic staircase, the circulation generates various contemplation spaces connecting all the rooms or pavilions of a considerable height, with doors and windows that allow the interior space to absorb, as part of it, the imposing views of the city.
Casa Pedregal by Studio Patricia Meneses. Photograph by Rodrigo Calzada / Albers studio.
Description of project by Studio Patricia Meneses
In the middle of a rocky, desert landscape, where once there was a forest, a wide slope rises, connecting with the great lung of the city.
Casa Pedregal emerges from the rocks, a living space composed of volumes scattered across the landscape, a bridging space between the urban forest and the slopes of the city.
The project seeks to give continuity to this great natural fabric and expand towards the mountains, from which the broad horizon of the entire city can be contemplated.
Intense skies, violet sunsets and desert ochres envelop the views of the house from all its spaces.
A series of prisms rise above the territory, subtly barely touching the natural terrain, giving way to the creation of a large garden that results from the topographic continuity of the mountain, allowing the natural course of water and a symbiosis with the spontaneous vegetation.
The project is structured around the large rock formations that dominate the terrain. Elevated walkways branch off from the backbone of the project; a central walkway rises along the territory to more than ten meters high, introducing us to a series of prisms detached from the earth that house the living spaces of the house.
The ascent route suspends you above the vegetation, a garden created to envelop the daily paths, converting them, turning the route into a space of transition and contemplation, returning the individual to his or her original state of connection with nature.
The landscape itself becomes a habitable space. The crossing of winds, the abundant vegetation that filters the light and the presence of water generate a microclimate, humid and green in contrast to the arid and dry context.
A large tree frames the access, raising its leaves, which, in a cadence, fossilizes its passage in the envelope of the upper space, from which the individual is given to inhabit from the heights, his personal refuge.
!["SILENT GARDEN" [I] by Patricia Meneses](/sites/default/files/styles/mopis_home_news_category_slider_desktop/public/lead-images/stringio-3.webp?h=fbfbbd60&itok=2_dqYko9 "\"SILENT GARDEN\" [I] by Patricia Meneses")
!["SILENT GARDEN" [I] by Patricia Meneses](/sites/default/files/styles/mopis_home_news_category_slider_desktop/public/lead-images/metalocus_patricia_silent_n_09_0.webp?h=3b4e7bc7&itok=W__T-noV "\"SILENT GARDEN\" [I] by Patricia Meneses")
