OC House / Re Arquitectura + DAO

The house rests on stilts on the ground subtly adapting to the natural slope, the main steel structure allows it to be lightweight and the walls built with “Bahareque” ( wattle and daub technique) give the house an efficient adaptation to the climatic conditions of the area, also movable walls of perforated metal and big sliding glass walls were designed to open the house and allow complete integration with the natural context, feeling immersed in the forest, where Congo monkeys, oropendolas, iguanas and a variety of other wildlife inhabit. The “Bahareque” is an ancestral construction technique that we used as an enclosure within the steel supporting structure. The system consists of Melina wood frames, bamboo (dendrocalamus Asper) slats as reinforcement, and a mixture of soil (extracted from the excavations made at the site for the foundations), sand, and transvala grass from the cattle farms in the area.

Rescuing this construction technique of our ancestors makes this house a special experience, a hybrid of modern architecture and traditional local materials, a construction that is created with the land itself in which it is founded, breathes, lives, and adapts to the climatic conditions, reducing the impact on its direct context and becoming a possible solution to the current challenges regarding the cost and accessibility of materials, the use of local resources and their socio-environmental impact.