Alzina

23 houses ensemble

Over a thick pine forest that falls gently into a landscape of meadows and lakes, this set of twenty-three houses is proposed. The aim is to hide under the thick shade of the pines and to go unnoticed by a slow, autochthonous and at the same time surprising architecture.

Each house is decomposed into cubes of different proportions that settle at different heights following the natural plot. The houses are grouped in pairs to reduce the visual impact and to share the golf views from the access road at the highest point of the hill.

All the houses share the same characteristics and palette of colors: soil red, for the ground that contrasts with the green canvas of the location; and white, for the rest of the architecture in the manner of the whitewashed villages – windows, walls, ceilings. This apparent monotony is fought with five types of housing, which adapt to the variable topography creating entries on the upper or lower floor, in an indistinct manner and in order to preserve the landscape.

Inhabiting these houses resembles returning to vernacular models of simple rooms, little ornamented, high ceilings and a lot of wall surface. Technological advances are gathered on the ground floor. Island kitchens opened to a private patio. The rooms occupy a high cube, opened on three sides and with a system of carpentry that disappear into the walls to create a large open porch.