Casa Q by Augusto Quijano Arquitectos
Location: Mérida, Yucatán, México
Year: 2013
Photo courtesy: Roberto Cárdenas Cabello
Description:
Weekend House at Yucatán Country Club, a development with golf course, on the outskirts of the city of Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico. The intention of this house is to recover that own peace that rest days, invite to relaxation, with an architecture based on producing a series of free, shaded, spaces that allow the passage of the breeze, looking at all times the visuals to golf course. A free-flowing house, which set up a place.
The House Q is assembled by two blocks: the public area, which rises to find the Visual field and look into a Lake; and the private area reserved the visuals from the field. On the one hand the public zone pointing to the field with a gesture of opening, and on the other hand, as backup, the area of the room. All the spaces come to camp, since services are located, to the West side, at the junction of the two areas, both ground floor and a second level. This scheme in an L-shape allows you to take the prevailing winds from the Northeast and East for all spaces, blocks south to the room and opens to take uniform light from the North.
From the street only perceives a great stone wall containing the facilities in the rooms, and a slab by way of large drawing that brand access and defines the garage. Access is free, through a grating of wood towards the public space. This lobby between the rooms and services, access to a space that leads to the terrace of the public space. When turning, a terrace leads to the rooms which are facing the garden space and the field. Outline clear, free, great fluidity, spaces that produce terraces by means of horizontal planes that pass through the place.
Spatial continuity, between interior and exterior, between Sun and shade dialectic relation. The spatial structure is based on plans that direct Visual toward the field. Generate exterior activities. The main thing is on the outside, sunny and shaded, built and natural. An exercise project where the space forms, where the outside and nature stand out, above the formal and aggressive claims in an environment in which the important thing is enjoyment, relaxation and feelings is more important.
The House contains a series of spaces where you live, you can enjoy living, and is therefore coexists. This made for a better life. It comes to its users friendly architecture, to the palpable and sensitive architecture, serious architecture, without folklorisms or additions, where each element and each are in place and in relation to the place. The handling of stone, local materials in different formats, stone floors, shutters and ceiling of wood, steel and glass, this House aims to be an exercise where the activities produce the space and not the areas and forms. A dialectic game counterpoints. Manage locked in a natural way, take the site and compose with the terrain. Is an exercise project based on the architecture of the Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian houses, mainly the Kentuck Knob, and interaction with other examples of modern architecture like Richard Neutra houses
The House meets the conditions of the environment, generating spaces as hallways, porches and terraces that make up the place with the House, places of cool and shaded to integrate the exterior with the interior terraces to relate the spaces with the places where they are constructed, where cross ventilation, the quality of light permitted and transitions from outside to inside occuran architecture where the climate is essential for the Sun, the shade and Breeze are also users. What we call today sustainable, is what always has been called architecture, without artifice or resources, but designing spaces such as they must be, in the spirit of the place, without denying the spirit of the times.
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