AIR HOUSE | ANGELILLO & SIMON arquitectos

The design of this house located in a land between party walls, had some data that were fundamental for its design:
- THE ORIENTATION OF GREATER SUN LIGHT (NORTH) is in front of the lot.
- THE FORM OF THE LOT (Something narrow and very deep)

Those 2 data were at all times our common thread when designing the house.
In order to solve the problem of the unfavorable orientation for the most important rooms of the house arranged on the back of the house, and taking into account the length of the land, it was decided to divide the house into 3 strips transverse to the lot. The central strip was transformed into an opening that captures all the sun and light possible, entering above the front volume through a patio on the ground floor, the double height of the staircase and a patio on the upper floor. In this way, allowing the sun's rays to reach the interior of the rooms that face the garden but facing south.

This idea required a detailed volumetric study, analyzing the path of the sun at its different times of the year, in order to determine the minimum necessary separation and the location and size of the windows. This influenced a large percentage of the morphology of the projected volumes.
The house is accessed from the street through a grid of horizontal bars under a metal and glass roof, forming a portal with modern lines. You enter a garden, always accompanied by an exposed concrete wall, with lights and a flowerbed with plants.

Upon entering the interior, you can see a house with integrated rooms, where the exposed concrete wall that starts in the exterior circulation, is still very present in the interior, being practically the only division on which the ground floor is distributed.

The staircase is located in the center of the house and gets an important presence within its spatiality. The metallic structure and its wooden steps (of industrial aspect) and of comfortable dimensions, make up a space in itself, and it is used in addition to a decorative and functional element. It is used as a resource to channel the route not only between the two floors, but also on each floor.

Inside the house, the entire circulation was thought of as a route, where the observer, when traveling through it, seeks to discover different interior spaces (double heights, change of materials, different situations, etc.) as well as outdoors ( One sees the patio and the flower beds lit with tropical plants, the different light incomes, the outdoor vegetation, etc.)

Regarding the selected materials, we sought to accompany the ideas of the house. Clear materials were sought to obtain greater luminosity. The ground floor of smoothed cement stands out, as well as the presence of iron (staircase, slab profile, upstairs railings, etc.) exposed concrete walls and the wood of the staircase.