Gramática Arquitectónica studio describes the ground floor of Cova Miradoiro as a cave, with natural materials such as stone and wood, surrounded by a garden that separates it from the outside street. However, the home and the garden are understood as connected entities, the gaps in the stone can reveal leaks of green, or the sheets of Galician granite courses can be the background to observe nature in close-up.
The ground floor is identified as a meeting space for collective uses, while the upper floor has another narrative, these are private spaces for each member of the family, respecting their privacy, their space and their own view. In addition, a separate module is added with a separate entrance for visitors.
Cova Miradoiro in Caeira by Gramática Arquitectónica. Photograph by Andrés Fraga.
Description of project by Gramática Arquitectónica
Andrés was taking the pictures of the house and he suddenly said that the windows in this house reminded him of giant mirrors that reflected the garden.
I had not thought about that before… because I had always thought about the cova-miradoiro house as a succession of views, sometimes green views and another times city landscape views. It is a recurrent topic everytime I work… maybe I am a claustrophobic person and I am always trying to let eyes scape outside in any closed space, in any direction or unexpected place, there is always a small or big window to breathe and expand closed interiors.
Or maybe I just understand constructions as objects that keep and let air pass through, the views… a case where to spend some time, refuge ourselves.
In this cova-miradoiro house, there is a complete difference between the ground floor world and the top floor world.
The ground floor is a cave surrounded by a garden, a very leafy one that acts as a green atmosphere that separates the residential reality from the surrounding street.
Cova Miradoiro in Caeira by Gramática Arquitectónica. Photograph by Andrés Fraga.
The garden was designed by Irene Díez Prieto. When we started the project we both decided that the garden had to be the opposite to the architecture. The garden is a bit messy, leafy. The construction is tidy, minimalistic.
So, is the concept of the house the constructed materiality? Or is the garden and the constructed materiality both the house? I think in this case, it becomes a whole we cannot separate so the architecture in this project is the mix between both realities.
Constructed space and garden work together… they were designed by two different persons but aiming the same objective. Sometimes gaps in the heavy stone walls let you see the trees and bushes views, but at other times the galician granite vertical rows become a wallpaper that let us see in foreground the bees pecking the multi colored flowers.
If you keep reading, I will tell you that I really like the sensation being in that exterior living room which at the same time is a cave. Selecting real materials, not imitation ones, reinforces the sensation of sound, humidity and light reflection of being in the nature. In the outside the house is beige galician granite on pavements and walls, brown cooper for the roofs, and iroko wood on some of the paraments. Aluminum brown windows were selected in order to maintain them in perfect condition in the coming years.
The top floor world is a very different one. It is the private unipersonal spaces or units of each family member. If we separate the ground floor from the top floor, and we repeat it vertically it could seem we were designing a multi-family house scheme, with those separated balconies.
Cova Miradoiro in Caeira by Gramática Arquitectónica. Photograph by Andrés Fraga.
Every room in the top floor seeks intimacy, it tries to search for it´s own space and view of the city. Maybe it can represent the metaphor of how we should preserve our own small individuality as a unit that conforms a whole, a family.
At this height one can enjoy the views of the city of Pontevedra, the Lérez river, and a little bit far away the mountains that surround the valley and the sky or the stars. They are four small brown wood balconies where your head is literally in the clouds.
When one family member descends to the ground floor, it begins the collective life of the family in the cave garden. The cave is formed because of the little gap between the kitchen, family room with fireplace and studio that is separated from a unit that works as a visitors room with its own bathroom and storage. The family was clear that they were going to have many visitors throughout the year… but wanted also a little bit of distance to them at times.
In this text I have tried to describe the sensations that generates the house everytime I visit it. The square construction abandons the idea of being just four front facades and it seems a little bit more a sequence of sceneries.
The observation Andrés the photographer did, about the giant mirrors, is something I really liked, so I add it as another ingredient of the atmosphere that takes place in the house. In the article the installations, materials and people who made possible the construction as also kept in mind.
