“Domesticate the mountain, make it part of the family life project, a biophilic house.”
The mountain is a place to build a home. The house is located in the western mountain range of the Colombian Andes, in a rural area between the city of Medellin and the municipality of Guarne in the eastern highlands of Antioquia, with a humid tropical climate with average temperatures of 14 °C and relative humidity of up to 89%. Forests, agriculture, and the visual relationship between plateaus make up a diverse landscape in tension between natural conservation and cultural appropriation of the territory, making it ideal for families and young inhabitants deciding to live in the mountains, looking for sustainable options in balance with the ecosystems.
AN ECOSYSTEMIC POSTULATE FOR A MOUNTAIN HOME
- Palafitics to place and raise the house on the topography with minimal earth movement, allowing water to flow without the architecture of the house is a water containment in the mountain, while promoting the coexistence of biodiverse daily life, as it does not interrupt the ecological connectivity of the soil, and facilitates the space between the house and the ground to serve as a shelter in various circumstances.
The palafitic system is part of the ancestral construction techniques used to inhabit the mountains. In the Colombian coffee region, in the coffee farms, many of these houses were palafitic because of the steepness of the topography and because the lower levels of the buildings were used to keep animals or provide sleeping space for the harvesters during the harvest season. This way of situating oneself in the mountain allows the establishment of ecological relationships that domesticate the relationship between nature and the family.
- Multipurpose framework, the archetypal system of columns and beams that determine the structural elements that free the surfaces and space. In the house, the metal frame (beams and columns) allows the modulation of the construction in stages, forming three sections and having transparent bridges that connect the 50 m2 of area. The framework can be adapted using distinct materials such as masonry, wood, metal sheets, and superboard plates, allowing the evaluation during construction stages and propitiating the experiment with materials to improve cost-benefit.
Columns with lengths of 2.5 m to 4.5 m and free heights of 4.5 m, allow modulated lights to configure a solid but flexible structural base for the day-to-day adaptations of the inhabitant without affecting the main spatial scheme. The framework admits it to do more over time to transform itself without being traumatic for the architecture. The structural polyvalence is the structure that allows the creative and restless identity of its inhabitants, understanding that the inhabitants are a family of industrial designers.
- The roof geometry configures a gable system with a difference in ridge heights between one plane and the other to confirm a continuous roof skylight. The waters allow the collection of rainwater at the ends; the angles accept the installation of solar panels; the direction of the modules according to the solar incidence, plus the proportion to the interior and the separation of the house plane from the ground, allow the thermal perception to be warm and balanced; the geometry of the roofs frames and magnifies the domestic atmospheres of the house.
The vernacular architecture of the Colombian mountain house is distinguished by its concave roofs with eaves, achieving functional water management but also the maintenance and thermodynamic regulation of the facades. These eaves become intermediate spaces, flower gardens, and shelter from the sun or rain. The roofs and eaves are part of the cultural identity of the mountain habitat.
- Floating intermediate spaces. The footprint of the house floating on stilts presents an in-between space that serves as a refuge for biodiversity, without this being a problem of coexistence between the family and its biodiverse neighborhood.
The floating access as a technical grid-type metallic platform allows one to see the natural ground before entering the house without losing the relationship with the exterior. Slope balconies expand the feeling of the interior by allowing one to see the landscape from near and far framing the panorama according to the direction of the modules in a 180-degree view. The transparent bridges connect the three spaces of the house, suggesting a relationship with the exterior that is useful because the heating radiators are for the habitations, and their transparency allows a visual that crosses between the residence and the landscape.
A small greenhouse is a welcoming space, a laboratory-like welcome: "Welcome to a home that is inside and outside" as an almost sculptural gesture of transparency and warmth, which locates some seedlings and plants with which the landscaping of the project is being developed.
- Time and living, the house represented the beginning of a domestic project in the mountain, a family project of creative subjects by vocation and training (designers). Their premise for the design was that the house let them be and that could be built with them over time, so it was configured as an industrial system of metal structure and flexible spatial scheme that determines the maximum comfort for habitability and allows the transformation over time, the emergence of devices for storage, mansards, even a new module if considered necessary.
Progressive architecture shapes time for the free appropriation of inhabiting is a strategy that frees the architectural imaginary from its vanity and conjugates with the ambiguous, complex needs of inhabiting. A more empathetic and contextualized image, the mountain house, is not the end of the imagination, but the means to configure an ecosystemic image of the production of domestic space, in the constant search for harmony in the western mountain range of the Colombian Andes.
Team:
Architect: COONVITE, architecture cooperative
Photography: Yeferson Bernal Santacruz - Mateo Gallego
Material Used:
1. Arkos, sistemas arquitectónicos: Roof tiles
2. Comprecolor: Bricks
3. Argos: Cement
4. Homecenter: Wood
5. Tienda del triplex: Wood
6. Alfa: Floors
