P12 house, Sitio de Arnela Residence, ria de Foz Home, Lugo Architecture, Building
House in Sitio de Arnela, Lugo : ria de Foz Residence
P12 Lugo Building design by PO2 ARQUITECTOS, España
3 + 1 Apr 2012
P12 house Sitio de Arnela ria de Foz Lugo
Design: PO2 ARQUITECTOS
This is a single home named P12, in Sitio de Arnela, ria de Foz, Lugo, Spain.
Casa P12
Galicia, Spain
Prize Winner: IX Young Architects Exhibition 2006. Antonio Camuñas Foundation
In the summer of 2002, a young couple with two children decided to build a house. The site that they choose occupies a great land extension located at the bottom of Ría de Foz (estuary in the coast of Lugo, Spain), surrounded by dense eucalyptus and pine forests that have to be crossed to reach the border water: a changeable spot according to the tide levels, which we also used to guide our project proposal since the beginning.
In our first dates with the clients, they told us about the reasons that took them to change the city for the countryside, their need for space and landscapes and at the end they surprised us with a special interest for plain roofs and metallic panels in façades. As for the living spaces, they did not needed anything different from the usual, but the solicited dimensions exceeded our initial proposals, with their intention to turn the house in a gathering place, considering the relatives living nearby.
The final project soon was over, also urged by an imminent new law that would arrive and establish a 200 meters limit from the coast for any construction, in order to respect the Urban Management and Rural Environment in Galicia. The same new law would foresee the fulfillment of certain “typological characteristics for building according with the surroundings”, where the use of tile or slate stone for the roofs and walls was taken as a precondition.
At that time, the house project did not respect any of these prerequisites: metallic prism with plain roof at 100 meters from the water line.
Since the beginning we searched intentionally for a unique object, elemental, impregnated with the essence of a variable and natural environment, a “bridge-house” parallel with the estuary that allows the multiple views from the inside without losing the compact appearance from the outside; an extended and narrow house perforated by a void creating the legs that supports the “box” of the first floor, frames the landscape and at the same time organizes the arriving park for cars and the access to the interior, becoming the only void that communicates both metallic façades and separates the main house from the guests living rooms.
The vertical voids that do not appear in the façade organize and illuminate the spaces that, according with its uses should be enclosed and so, creates a longitudinal sequence that defines the internal circulation.
We create a living space inside a “tube”, where the daily routines became indecisions brought by an unconventional use of the spaces, introducing flexibility as an experience connected with the perceptive ambiguity of each resident or guest in the house: each one of them will use it according with their own way so that, at the end, they will use it precisely as we have planned.
For this to be true, after a long building period (2 years), the accesses to the site and the house terrain are still missing, that will later be defined by an elliptical vegetal limit, growing adapting to the contours of the land and ending up in a new independent garage, that arose while the building.
Meanwhile, and using the connection of the clients with the furniture industry, we developed some sketches adapted to the house spaces (living, dinner and sleeping rooms), where some are already made and the rest is still in the fabrication process.
This voluntary irruption in the furniture design leads to an inevitable advisable process at the time of selecting the rest of the pieces, a process that has just began…
The client is private and the project was realized in 2002, but constructed from July 2003 till August 2005.
The total area is 380 m2.
House in Sitio de Arnela images / information from PO2 ARQUITECTOS
Location: Sitio de Arnela, ria de Foz, Lugo, Spain, southwestern Europe
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