360 House, Madrid home, Residential Spanish Building, Photos, Architect, Spain Property

House in Galapagar, Madrid

Contemporary Spanish home design by SUBARQUITECTURA, Architects

6 Apr 2010

360 House in Galapagar

Location: Madrid
2008-
Architect : SUBARQUITECTURA

360 HOUSE in Galapagar, Madrid

A unique opportunity for us is in reality a problema that’s been posed thousands of times: to construct a house with a public programme of social relation, associated with the prívate life of a numerous family on a sloping plot of land with privileged views of the mountains outside Madrid. It has no one solution, there are many, they’re even catalogued in books about houses of a slope.

We try not to think of domestic spaces. On the contrary, we take as a point of reference works of engineering, motorway intersections, changes of direction. We proceed from generic solutions to the problem of descending, solutions that conceal great plasticity. We seek the poetic in all that seems to have been considered from the merely pragmatic point of view.

The result is the literal construction of a use diagram. In this instance, form does not follow function, but is instead function itself. Cyclical movement, routine and surprise turn into a way of living.Its formal complexity offers the possibility of reaching all points of the house through two different routes, which multiply the possibilities of use and enjoyment.

It has the form of a loop, 360º, like the shapes skaters make, like of gymnasts, as artistic as they are precise.An extreme shape, the house is curved, generating the greatest quantity of linear meters towards the good views. It is shored up in the landscape and turns back on itself, completing the revolution. The degree of intimacy increases as the distance to the ends increases. At the midpoint, a mediatheque, isolated and completely dark, 100 % technology, 0 % landscape.

With a single gesture two ways of moving are generated: going down and looking outwards. The long house, a sinuous movement, a descent by ramp and ample turning radii tangential to the setbacks of the plot of land generate a panoramic vision. The short house, the quick way in a straight line, stairs of direct descent and a deep view towards the landscape.

A building that is black outside, absorbent, of slate, a material specific to the location, imposed as an aesthetic specification of the area. White inside, reflective, generic, neutral, and luminous. Life incorporates colour, outside with the vegetation and inside with the people.

360 House, Madrid – Building Information

Architecture Office: SUBARQUITECTURA (Andrés Silanes, Fernando Valderrama y Carlos Bañón)
Promoter: ARCO Design and Projects
Structural Engineering: SUBARQUITECTURA
Dates of Project / Construction: from May 2008 to Dec 2009
Location: Galapagar, Madrid, Spain
Built surface: 385 sqm
Plot Surface: 1.528 sqm