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Casa Cuatro Soles
By : Chain + Siman, Renatta Chain + Lina Siman
GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN – 17th edition
Discipline : Architecture : Grand Winner
Categories : Residential Building / Cottage & Country House : Platinum Winner
Casa Cuatro Soles is a weekend residence located in Rancho Avándaro, south of the network pueblos mágicos (magical towns) of Avándaro and Valle de Bravo.
The project was designed for a three-generation family. This consists of the grandparents (who commissioned the project), their three children, and the grandchildren, ranging from newborns to teenagers. The goal was to create a weekend or vacation home for the entire family. Each family group had distinct needs, so all the bedrooms were designed with each member in mind. The public areas are designed for mingling, to accommodate the largest number of users and facilitate togetherness between the different families and members.
The concept revolves around translating the diversity of the users ages and relationships into various formal and material contrasting interpretations that can interact with each other, resulting in an unexpectedly diverse and coherent architectural language seen from the different zones of the plot. This formal transition can be seen mainly from the rear façade; on the east and west sides, they establish different readings and evoke the atmosphere of a contemporary country house. The residence is divided into two main volumes organized perpendicularly and a small secondary rectangular volume connected to a corridor that serves as the main entrance and that houses a utility room. The roofs of these main volumes are gabled; they have an Oyamel structure and beams that support the black clay tiles. They were configured to generate pentagonal geometries that break the continuity of the long, horizontal, and rectangular lines of the entry and the vertical lines of the beams.
The architectural style was chosen to establish a dialogue between traditional inspiration, dominated by materials and construction processes, and a contemporary style, shaped by geometry and a formal proposal. The house was deliberately oriented to maximize the views of the surrounding landscape, so the height of the roofs and the opening to the south seek to frame the forest. The concept revolves around translating the diversity of the users ages and relationships into various formal and material contrasting interpretations that can interact with each other, resulting in an unexpectedly diverse and coherent architectural language seen from the different zones of the plot.
The house was built using traditional processes. The exterior walls of the two main volumes and the secondary volume are covered with handmade gray brick. The roofs of the main volumes are made of flat black clay tiles and the columns in the access corridor and the support columns on the rear façade are made of local Mexican Oyamel, while the roof of the access corridor features a black steel structure. The interior materials feature three different woods. The aesthetics of this material dialogue between the three types of wood was fully leveraged to create the same architectural language throughout the interior of the project.
The project features both active and passive sustainable systems. The active systems include solar panels, a rainwater harvesting system, a wastewater reuse treatment plant, and Duovent glass for thermal and acoustic efficiency. In the passive systems, the large windows and domes maximize natural light to reduce energy consumption. Cross ventilation operates throughout the house to maintain a cool indoor environment.
Collaboration
