Casa de la Roca by Eduardo Cadaval & Clara Solà-Morales
21/08/2018.
[Reserva el Peñon - Valle de Bravo] Mexico México
metalocus, ANDREA GONZÁLEZ
metalocus, ANDREA GONZÁLEZ
Description of project by Eduardo Cadaval & Clara Solà-Morales
The landscape surrounding the house is a unique place, where each and every one of its corners can be celebrated. The project works with a double strategy: to build lookouts towards three specific points distant from each other while building a central, nodal, protected but open to the outside, and that has a total exposure to different environments that the own architecture delimits.
The architectural strategy is also developed through the materiality of the project: on the one hand with decisions that have to do with maintenance, structure and thermal behavior; and on the other, by material decisions that result from considering the visual weight that architecture must have in landscapes as recondite as the one the house occupies.
Concrete will undoubtedly be a starting point, due to its high structural performance against a changing topography on one side of the house; It is also indisputable its good behavior over the years and its low need for maintenance. The thermal mass of the material is positive due to the thermal jumps in the area; and the incorporation of large openings of crossed windows allow to generate punctually crossed ventilations that grant the project a high thermal comfort throughout the different moments of the day, as well as throughout the year.
However, the differential ingredient of the CDLR project is the commitment to the reuse of the huge amount of wood obtained from fallen or dead trees throughout the area, the roof of the house, which defines the limits of all living spaces, both interior and exterior, will be built with that wood, and that wood. Between these beams, a ceramic piece is placed as a lost formwork, which consolidates the plane of the roof. A material of great personality appears in this way, which constructs a single plane, with the wood establishing a very emphatic and directional rhythm that will order the project, at the same time that it defines a basic work module for the definition of the spaces.
The house is painted black. It is painted (and not dye), as it is, in turn, another layer of material protection that configures the house; it is painting, because the house is very exposed to the inclemency of time, and the dye tends to lose its qualities over the years; and it is black, responding to the desire to blend in with the landscape, seeking a certain anonymity in front of the vegetation and exuberant views.
CADAVAL & SOLÀ-MORALES was founded in New York City in 2003 and moved to both Barcelona & Mexico City in 2005. The studio operates as a laboratory in which research and development are key elements of the design process. The objective of the firm is to create intelligent design solutions at many different scales, from large projects to small buildings, from objects to city fractions.
The studio has won numerous awards including the prestigious Bauwelt Prize (Munich 2009), the Young Architects Prize from the Catalan Institute of Architects (Barcelona 2008), the Design Vanguard Award (New York 2008), a Mention of Honor for Young Architects from the IX Spanish Architecture Biennale (Madrid 2007), The Silver Medal of the XI Mexican Architecture Biennale (Mexico 2010) and the Prize of the Ibero American Architecture Biennale (Cadiz 2012).
EDUARDO CADAVAL is a licensed architect with a BA from the National University of Mexico (with special honours) and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University.
He is associate professor of Urbanism at the Barcelona School of Architecture, ETSAB, UPC. Visiting Professor at University of Pennsylvania, and at Calgary University's Barcelona program. Eduardo was awarded with the National Council for the Arts Young Creators Awards, from the Mexican government.
CLARA SOLÁ-MORALES is a licensed architect with a degree in Architecture from the Barcelona's School of Architecture, ETSAB, UPC, and holds a Master in Architecture (MArch II) from Harvard University. She is an associate professor at the Barcelona School of Architecture, ETSAB, UPC.
She has been associate professor at the school of Architecture at the Rovira y Virgili University, as well as professor and Head of Graduate Studies at the Barcelona Institute of Architecture (BIArch). She is a PhD candidate for the Barcelona School of Architecture, ETSAB, UPC.