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Miguel Barahona Arquitecture presents House on the Hill and La Envia Health Center
Miguel Barahona Arquitecture is an office specialised in customized projects for distinct clients. A creative analysis of the needs and wishes of their client is the origin of their design philosophy. The client is personally involved in the process so the identification with the final product is complete. The opportunities derived from the study of the site are the second input in the process. Research of spatial possibilities is the third one. This methodology results in a different and personal project, far from anonymous and repetitive architecture.
The House on the Hill is organised around three courtyards. The two smaller ones define an axis that runs along the path from the street to the garden. The larger courtyard is occupied almost entirely by the indoor pool, around which all the elements of the house are arranged. The living room occupies an intermediate situation, surrounded by water on three of its sides, with large windows facing the courtyard and looking into the garden. This apparently simple and strict scheme is transformed by the almost total internal transparency and the slope of the roof. The different environments of the house are all visually connected enhancing and augmenting the spatial experience. The project seeks to build a complex medium capable of encompassing and generating the multiplicity and variety of activities inherent to the domestic sphere. Three levels of relationships are posed: internal, with respect to the patios, pool and other premises; close, with respect to the garden; far, with respect to the landscape.
Sea, plastic, desert, mountains: In such an overpowering environment, the reference of La Envia Health Center could be no other than landscape itself. A landscape that is the result not only of unique natural conditions, but of the extraordinary action of man. The Health Center lies on the plot as an object without any compositional or iconographic references. This object is then subjected to a process of complexification through the use of colour, randomness, reflection and superposition, so as to make the building space- and place-sensitive. Transparencies, reflections, oblique views, and exterior perspectives shape a conceptual space that in spite of its simplicity, fluctuates between clarity and indetermination, contemplation and introversion.
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