Description

The architects, Aranda-Pigem-Vilalta, have created a most elegant piece of architecture in the Casa Mirador. The building dissolves completely into glass on the park-like garden side, and its compellingly horizontal thrust seems to let it float over the slightly undulating terrain. The volume breaks down into strictly hierarchically articulated areas, the main building containing the living area and the bedrooms, and the side building with kitchen and ‘gimnasio’, the sports room. A sharp break demonstrates impressively that this smelly, sweaty area was to be strictly separated from the rest of the relaxation space. An access track cuts deeply into the ground. It leads to the house from both sides of the plot and reaches the entrance to the upper storey via steps. Only a neck-like, glazed connecting structure serves as a way into or route through the building. It affords a panoramic view over an air space to the basement storey via a glazed loggia. The actual living room is at the west end of the building, and the bedrooms are in the east section; all the rooms including the WC are allowed to look out over the park. The loggia and living room in particular thus form a coherent observation zone for the relaxing view into the distance, but they can be closed off by storey-high sliding doors. The basement storey houses the garage and also a guest apartment with a workroom opposite, likewise lavishly glazed on the garden side.

The horizontal lie of the building conveys calm; this and the fact that the building dissolves into almost unprofiled glass demonstrate the transformation of a particular sense of life into architecture with a rare force.

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Originally published in: Klaus-Peter Gast, Living Plans: New Concepts for Advanced Housing, Birkhäuser, 2005.