El Llano House
EL LLANO HOUSE
Vincenzo Design Studio
ARCHITECTS
Vincenzo Design Studio
MANUFACTURERS
Cemex, Hafele, Gtec, Procon, Tekno-step, The Stone Co.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Paulina Ojeda
AREA
197 M²
YEAR
2015
LOCATION
Mexico
CATEGORY
Houses
Text description provided by architect.
This countryside house is located outside the urban area of the city of Aguascalientes, Mexico, in a non-residential area of the “El Llano” municipality.
The house was built within a rural area, and it could not exceed more than 5% of the plot (1 hectare), according to the internal regulations. Being a rural area, no utilities were provided when the construction started. As a result, building the house was a challenging task.
The scheme of the building was defined by two pre-existing natural elements: a marked line of trees and a natural water bank.
Its north façade looks towards the water bank, while its south façade opens to the natural vegetation. The house is distributed longitudinally from east to west, resulting in almost blind facades in these last two orientations.
The yellow split-face concrete block was used for almost all perimeter walls of the house, while all inner walls and the volume of the foyer were made of clinker bricks.
All the spaces of the house look towards the pre-existing tree line made up of mesquites, huisache (Mexican native trees), and Peruvian pepper trees.
The dry garden design on the north façade is made up of a variety of magueys and agaves, highlighting the Mexican flora.
The house consists of a master bedroom, a guest room, a corridor, a kitchen-dining area, a utility room, and a living room.
At one end of the house, there are the living room, kitchen-dining room, and the utility room, while at the other end are located the bedrooms. The entrance to the house was placed at the juncture of these two blocks, in order to maintain a certain degree of privacy.
The corridor that connects the private block with the rest of the house is made up of apparent reinforced concrete walls rotated at 45 degrees in relation to the walls of the private area and floor-to-ceiling windows.
The contrast of darkness and light while walking through the corridor enriches the space with a different atmosphere that changes throughout the day and during the seasons.
