Tda House

Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales

TDA HOUSE

Cadaval & Solà-Morales

CATEGORY
Houses

LOCATION
Puerto Escondido, Mexico

YEAR
2006

ARCHITECTS
Cadaval & Solà-Morales

AREA
350.0 m²

Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales

Text description provided by architect.

Where are the limits of materials? Are they in their apparently implicit properties or in our capacity to expand them?

A Fresh house for extreme weather that surpasses the standard limits of comfort of the city-dweller.

Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales
Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales

A low-cost house requiring minimum maintenance; a house for any number of habitants, flexible in its uses and configuration; a house that can open up completely to the exterior or close in on itself; a beach house that can be built in a distant corner of the world. 

The high temperatures, the saltpeter, and the unskilled labor force determined the use of concrete.

Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales
Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales
Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales

Bridges, breakwaters, and dams are also made in concrete, because of its structural capabilities and its resistance under extreme conditions.

This was the architect's starting point, and the tectonic and morphological possibilities of the material contributed to the formal definition of the project.

The section of the house, with its pronounced cantilevers, seeks to carry the expression of these qualities to the limit, but above all to adapt itself to the specific conditions of the context.

Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales
Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales

Three elements are defined for three distinct conditions: a tower volume which, in search of the sea, interrupts its opacity at strategic points until it achieves complete openness at the level where nothing blocks its views over the Mexican Pacific.

Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales
Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales

A second bedroom volume suspended over the water and the flowers of the garden; and a high, broad, airy, central space which distributes and channels the different activities going on in the house.

Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales
Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales

These three elements merge into a single volume of uncertain scale and rough textures. The great constructed exterior, forming a threshold under the imposing cantilever, is the most important space of the house, its central focus.

It has all the characteristics and potential of a made-to-measure interior: connected with the spacious central core of the house, protected by the balance and rigor of the constructed object, but at the same time supplied with light, water, and air.

Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales
Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales
Tda House
© Cadaval & Solà-Morales

Close to the lush tropical vegetation and colors that contrast with the neutrality of the concrete. All of this, suspended in the hammocks, reinforces the solidity of the structure and the ease with which it is inhabited.


Tda House
Tda House
Tda House
Tda House


Tda House
Tda House
Tda House
Tda House