A house that takes a walk with the landscape

The site of this residence is located on a street facing a hilly terrain at the fringe of a suburban neighborhood.

The house is designed to take advantage of this situation by setting up a rigid order related to the street at the front, and a more free form expression that interacts with the landscape at the back.

A three storey curved wall is implanted at the seam between these two orders, and acts as a large scale ‘retaining wall' that forms the back edge of the garden, referring to a landscape beyond the actual limits of the site. A type of in-between space is generated, liberating the back from the strict order of the front and allowing the edge of the building to ‘go for a walk'. This volume functions as the main circulation area of the house, which connects the children's playroom on the lower level, the living and kitchen area of the ground level and the bedrooms on the upper level. It acts like a lung for the entire house, which brings breath into the space by combining light, air and structure into a single large element.