July 22, 2014

Aldea House by Seijo Peon Arquitectos y Asociados

This private residence designed in 2012 by Seijo Peon Arquitectos y Asociados is located next to a golf course in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico.

Description by Seijo Peon Arquitectos y Asociados

The site of the house is in front of a golf course. On our first visit to the site was remarkable the amount of native trees that were in the field. As a first request to our client we asked for a detailed topographic study of all the trees in the site. From the beginning we intended to respect all the trees. Once we had the study in our hands, we faced a notable challenge… the possibility of keep all the trees, at least all of the medium and large size, assumed significant complexity. After studying multiple alternatives with conventional layouts (U shape, L shape, in two or three volumes, etc…) we figured out that in all cases we would have to cut an important amount of trees.

From that point we decided to build a project of multiple small habitable rooms would be filtered through the vegetation in a manner that all the trees are respected. This led us to think that the concept of the house would be like a village in which one travels outside in a sinuous way through the trees to get from one building to another.

To make more evident the project posture, the rooms of the house are designed as parallelepipeds that have very strong and clear volumetric presence. As opposed, the outer trails and the inner circulation (roofed and closed with glass walls) melt with the sinuous, organic and seemingly complex framework that the trees generate. The house is then conceived as a “village” so as to reach every single space you have to travel in a trail across the trees… like on a village in the jungle.

The program consists in 3 bedrooms, game room, living room, dining room, kitchen, service area and an outer social area with pool. The social area works as a link between the service areas and the private zone. The bedrooms are grouped into a set of pieces in a way that safe inner playgrounds are generated for the children. We take advantage of the site areas that have no view of the golf course to locate the service and support areas. The distribution of the social and private areas allows to form an outer space rich in environment quality from which the visuals vanished to the depth of the golf course.

Even with the notorious complexity and peculiar distribution on the floor plan, the house is presented to the context and the user as a simple building, without more pretentiousness but enjoy the life and the singular natural context.