House in Cadiz – Alfonso Alzugaray + Carlos Urzainqui – Spain

Architects: Alfonso Alzugaray + Carlos Urzainqui
Location: Cadiz, Spain
Collaborators: Leire Leoz y Jesús Ramírez
Project Year: 2008
Project Area: 640 m²
Photographs: Iñaki Bergera

One-family house in Cadiz

We are in the occidental edge of the natural park of the Estrecho, in an abrupt hillside, where the landscape value, its orientation and complicated topography are determining basics. But far from understanding them like “limits” we want to assume them as “positives” for the solution of the project and for being presents in the building helping to reinforce the intrinsic singularity of the emplacement, to which service is set this construction.

This is the project for the construction al a platform, base of the room and origin of the house. On it we establish the areas of common use (living room, kitchen, solarium…) with a swimming pool in one of its edges, while below, in a slightly visible way, the 5 bedrooms are protected. We understand the platform like a prolongation of the landscape that thanks to the blocks of orange stone forms a visual unity. The platform advances over its supports, minimizing the visual contact with the ground, suggesting an area that advances over the difference of level and achieves an elevated position on the hill and its vegetation. So, from the inner of this volume it is difficult to perceive the landscape, seeing directly the sea and facilitating in this way a perception of lightness of the volume from its inner.