La Casa Nueva | Juan Alberto Andrade

La Casa Nueva is a stationary and portable housing solution designed to meet the basic requirements of a shelter for two: a bed, a roof, workstations, a kitchen and a bathroom. A voluntary retreat without a specific place taking the demands of habitability almost anywhere.

Background / users: Juan Alberto Andrade + Cuqui Rodríguez
The project is a personal commission that arises from the real and demanding need to take our life: work, home, and our family in our journey of photographing architecture in Ecuador (JAG Studio).

Its portability gives it the ability to stay for short periods of time in different locations and with different configurations. La Casa aims to always be new; to be perceived or experienced depending on the place where it stops, therefore, the chosen position will be decisive in its condition of use.

The idea of the project was to reinterpret the material and shape of typical houses in the Ecuadorian coast, both on an experimental and on a primitive level. A wooden gabled structure raised from the floor. La Casa Nueva is made 100% with artisan craftsmanship. Yellowheart lumbers were used for the outer skin, Teak boards for the structural frame, and Plywood boards for the interior furniture. The structure rests on a 3.00 x 2.00m metal trailer secured with metal plates.

The outer skin has different opening possibilities, starting from a completely blind and sealed wooden shell, to a permeable place that is integrated with nature, providing an effect of great spatial capacity.

The interior space is divided into five parts conditioned by the structural modulation of the six frames every 0.60 m that divide the project according to its function. The first 2 out of 5 modules correspond to the raised bed and storage, the third module to a
flexible dining and desk space, and the fourth and fifth to a corridor and service area (kitchenette and bathroom).

La Casa Nueva has a water and drainage system through portable tanks and a sawdust-based dry toilet.

Lead Architect: Juan Alberto Andrade

Collaborators:
Cuqui Rodríguez
María José Váscones

Photography: JAG Studio

Area: 6m2
Manufacturers: Masisa El fortín Maderas El Cisne
Construction team: Eusebio Tomalá