Gallarda House
Gallarda House
LOCATION
Nijar, Spain
CATEGORY
Houses
Text description provided by architect.
3 HOUSES
Gallarda House, is a holiday residence that will probably end up becoming the residence of a young couple open to some outside social life. It is a house of ample dimensions in its public area - living room and dinning terrace - where pine trees will be planted- and the pool deck.
A life of simple acts is proposed, without sacrificing the pleasure everyday life: watering a plant, sit and read under a tree or dive into the water during the heatwave. The Mediterranean architecture was always that simple white frame -sometimes invisible- where man comes to happiness almost without realizing it.
GALLARDA HOUSE IS THREE HOUSE
H1. Transparent house. It is made of glass and located in the shade. It really is the place to be. One lives participating in the landscape and the sea. The house extends to the pool deck; also to the garden.
H2. The burrow house. It is a house of facilities. It is made of concrete and belongs to the Earth. This part is buried and works as a retaining wall slope.
H3. The white house. It is lime coated, opaque and floats in the air. It is close to heaven: there you just sleep and dream.
THE LANDSCAPE
No doubt: landscape is more intense for us, when it has an object standing . Both the work of Richard Long as the drawing of Mies Van der Rohe for the Resor House impinge on that idea.
Gallarda House shows its structure, in the same way the builders of the Nike temple did on the Acropolis or Luigi Figini in his Italian home: in both cases column structure successfully used.
TOPGRAPHY
Gallarda House is situated on top of the plot, where the views of the Mediterranean Sea, the village of Las Negras and Cerro Black are sharper. The house is oriented seeking for the best views and also settling to topography. Gallarda House gives an austere, effective and definitive answer to the "place issue"; and all the client programmatic constraints.
UNDERGROUND
Gallarda inherited a two main Mediterranean house traditions: whitewashed volumes, with windows designed to protect from direct sun radiation, avoiding the annoying greenhouse effect that occurs when it impinges on glass surfaces, and also bury part of the house to have fresh spaces.
