The house on the mountainside is one of those projects that magnetises the viewer. An extremely simple overall form is made complex in the detail by elaborate chiselling of the building’s volume. Its exquisite crystal geometry is juxtaposed against the natural and urban surroundings, yet it fits perfectly in the context; the locus is reinvented. The design abstraction of the project along with the simplicity of its unexpected geometry results in nuances of paradox making it unique.

According to the architect:

The building is located in a landscape of unique beauty, the result of a natural and evident growth. The mountain, topped by a castle, is covered by blanket housing through a system of aggregation by simple juxtaposition of pieces generated fragmented target tissue that adapts to the topography.

The project proposes to integrate into the environment, respecting their strategies of adaptation to the environment and materials away from the mimesis that would lead to misleading historicism, and showing the time constructively to meet the requirements of the “new people.” In this way the house is conceived as a piece placed on the ground, joining in the gap. A piece built on the same white lime, the same primacy of the massif on the opening, which takes the edge of the site to have their holes and integrated into the fragmentation of the environment.

The indoor space is divided by the void that is the core of communication cut parallel disposition of the mountain without touching it. On the ground floor are the garage and cellar, on a volume it has two floors with four rooms. Two of them, the rooms at the intermediate level are open to the private street, the other two on the upper level overlook above the houses opposite, the Valley of Ayora. One of them, the study is opened in turn to the central double height, incorporating it into their space. Across the gap, and on the mountain, are the areas facing the garden day illuminated by light reflected on the south slope of the castle oxidized.

ARCHITECT: Fran Silvestre Arquitectos, Valencia, Spain, www.fransilvestrenavarro.com. LOCATION: Ayora, Valencia. AREA: 230 sqm. PROJECT ARCHITECT: Fran Silvestre , Mª José Sáez. PROJECT TEAM: Pedro Vicente López López (Arch. Technician), José Ángel Ruíz Millo (Architect), José Vicente Miguel López (Architect), Javier Cardós Elena (Architect), Fernando Usó Martín. INTERIOR DESIGN: Alfaro Hofmann. CONTRACTOR: Cooperativa Montemayor. DATE: 2010.

COPYRIGHT: Fran Silvestre Arquitectos. PHOTOES: Fernando Alda.
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