Final+Project



This trimester in the design course we had to create a project in which we can observe different aspects that we already studied in this course. The project was to create a house for a family of five members, two parents and three children. This family had specific needs, for example, one parent needed a space like a studio that he could use to bring people to the house to work or just to show his work. This space also had specific requirements like it couldn’t be at the end of the house because people that were not part of the family shouldn’t walk into the private areas of the house to reach it. The basic requirements for this house, besides this public studio, were single bedrooms with bathrooms for the kids and a master bedroom for the parents, the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, the family room, and a private studio where the children could work on their homework. The context where the project was going to be placed was a piece of ground about 45 meters long and 7 meters wide surrounded by houses of the same size. The ground by itself looks like a deep tunnel and a big problem for a house in this location was that we only have one façade, and it was the one in front of the street and for this reason we shouldn’t use it to ventilate the internal spaces because the house was going to be too exposed to the outside. This particular situation was solved by creating internal courtyards to ventilate and illuminate the spaces. The house has a circulation module that contains the stairs and hallways that connect all the rooms that are arranged on three different floors, this circulation has a “pergola” roof so it could be illuminated. Also this roof is extended and becomes part of the façade. On the first floor we find the public studio, the living room, the dinning room, the kitchen and two courtyards. On the second floor is the private studio that has a private communication with the public studio, the family room and one of the three bedrooms of the kids. And finally, on the third floor we find the other two bedrooms, the master bedroom and a terrace. The structure of the house is basically columns and beams, but there are two types of beams, one that runs along the 45 meters and the other beams cross transversally the width of 7 meters with spans between 7 and 9 meters.

The materials used in this project are reinforced concrete in the walls, floor, roof, stairs, columns and beams, and wood in the “pergola” roof, doors and windows.

An important thing that I learned with this project was that we can create a beautiful and well organized house out of a ground that at first sight seems like impossible to create. Also I learned a little bit about how to unify the artistic side and the functional part of the project that includes the spaces that will satisfy the client needs, and how to adapt these two parts to a specific context that has some limitations or regulations that can’t be broken.

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