A concrete body settles on a mountainous landscape to articulate function and space, creating domestic life beneath its inhabitable threshold. Responding to its user’s needs, it sought to form a home that is intimate and protected —silent to the outside, human to the inside.

The starting point was a black bar —continuous, low, and heavy weighted— placed along the front of the lot to contain the public program: vestibule, kitchen, service areas, gym, and parking. This volume defines the remaining open area, transforming it into an interior patio sheltered from view. Parallel to this newly formed courtyard, the bar softens its openness through a stoa that contains the main circulation of the ground floor... READ MORE

Above this patio, and perpendicular to the black bar, a second entity appears —one that both takes and gives life to the house through its morphology: a concrete creature. Detached from the perimeter, it spans the site like an inhabited beam, containing the night program —family room and bedrooms— while casting shade, form, and order over the rest of the dwelling. It receives visitors with an imposing gesture, stretching out in a cantilever to protect the entrance, yet yielding gently to allow a tree to pierce through it. Entering through its curved mouth reveals a double-height vestibule held by its concrete “footsteps” in the form of vertical slabs. From there, on the ground floor, the social program —dining and living— unfolds beneath the shadow of its suspended gut, supported by extensions of the black base in the form of columns and by a long chimney, heart of the social area... READ MORE

The patios —one enclosed and familiar, the other broad and extending towards the pool— dictate the behaviour of the upper volume. To the northwest, the second-floor circulation runs along the intimate patio, emphasized by a linear closet that separates it from the exterior and filters the light through deep, vertical openings. Conversely, towards the southeast, the volume opens into private balconies for the three bedrooms. Further on, the concrete body stretches again towards the garden to cover the outdoor grill area, resting on two concrete legs —an inverted truncated pyramid and a concrete wall that defines the pool area— and carving out two more voids that allow indirect light to enter the main bedroom...READ MORE

The materiality of the volumes —and of the project as a whole— is accentuated as part of its character. The concrete is left exposed, honest, with its own formwork texture, contrasting with lighter surfaces: the black bar, with its dark mineral finish, visually lifts the upper volume from the ground and cools the interior from the outside heat; while the continuous wooden floor throughout the house provides warmth and welcomes the barefoot step as an everyday gesture of inhabiting.

The staircase —the link between both volumes— is conceived as an autonomous object. Broad and seemingly weightless, it is composed of self-supporting corten-steel elements anchored to the vertical concrete structure. Each bracket, shaped as a triangular pyramid, supports the treads through tension rods fixed to a T-shaped metal handrail, which acts as both railing and beam. The treads are covered with the same wood as the floor, extending its texture and connecting both levels materially.

Here, aesthetics is not a result: it is a method. Form does not illustrate function; it generates it. The concrete body does not symbolize; it organizes, frames, shades, crosses, and shelters. As one moves through the house, one transitions from containment to void, from shadow to light, from silence to shared life. And it is there —in that choreography of planes, openings, and densities— that the house finds its character: not in what it shows, but in what it holds.