Casa Monolito | Infante Arquitectos

The house emerges on a small clayey terrain with an east-west solar orientation in the southern and highest part of the city; where a couple of decades ago there were only meadows and mountain ranges on the site, and where currently the land has been exploited to form housing complexes due to the demand for housing.

Thus, the premise of the project lies as a reminder of the natural landscape that preceded the arrival of our species.

Having a reading of time and context, a house based on space-material experimentation is proposed, which on the outside would have a simple reading as if the piece or this "Monolith" existed unaltered until today, and that the user, having the need seeking refuge would have carved and molded at will the great mass in its bowels as if it were a hypogeal construction.

On the outside it shows a stereotomic character dominated by the massif, and that appearance of perpetuity provided by materials in earthy tones in harmony with the proposed stone ensembles. Privacy and shelter generated by being almost completely enveloped are privileged, opening the way to certain cavities and loopholes that allowed lighting and ventilation issues to be resolved, also managing to capture a visual from the interior to the exterior without losing privacy.

When we go inside we observe the program that involves the ground floor, a first scale receives us compacting us in the access, once entering the scale changes, the lobby and circulations are released from this compression generating a double height, knowing the orientation of the property and Since in the future the house will be delimited on its sides, an overhead light passage is proposed, this provides sufficient lighting to the interior, causing a tiny greenhouse effect which will maintain a constant temperature that is pleasant enough to warm the space in winter. Making our way we find the public area, the living room, dining room and kitchen interact in a monospace, these three areas dialogue with the outside through two patios, one front and one back which can extend the program by sliding systems and in turn act as lungs allowing the entire ground floor to breathe, having cross ventilation, together with the patios themselves maintaining a different materiality and tonality from the interior, in such a way that when the sun glides over the exterior walls it will permeate and bathe the interior walls in different shades , creating different atmospheres depending on the time of day.

Going up the double-height circulation that articulates the two levels, we find the upper floor, it houses the intimate area, in the back we find two small twin rooms, but with enough space for the purpose they were created, they share a bathroom to optimize the reduced rudeness of the house; a front room frames the privileged view of the wooded mountains that still resist being broken by the hand of man; This room has the kindness of connecting to the outside through the patio that starts from the ground floor, where the crown of a young poplar looks out, seeking to soften the weight of the material by integrating immediate vegetable layers.