Excerpt: Ensayo Umbra, a house designed by Bauen, is made up of various elements of the landscape. The design has Organic and geometric volumes that are articulated by a trunk axis, shadows, branches, and sky openings. In the centre of the house, under the branches that extend from the big tree are the shared social areas shaded by a catenary.
Project Description
“Reality would not only be what it is, what it reveals in truth but it would also be its double, its shadow, its image.”
Emmanuel Levinas
[Text as submitted by architect] The access to the house passes through small hills of grass, stone walls, and glass panels veiled by translucent armor.
The house is made up of various elements of the landscape. A hill receives us when we arrive at the site where the house was chosen to be built, in a landscape intervened by man. Organic and geometric volumes are articulated; a trunk axis, shadows, branches, and sky. Walls rise from the trunk axis like the blades of a large windmill.
Shadow and wind are necessary for inhabiting this summer village where the house is built.
The shadow is the part of the environment that is felt in the body, that is perceived. The tangible escapes and flees from us, that is why we build it, create it. Because without the tangible and built this territory becomes a little more hostile. The built environment offers care and safety. Shadow sometimes reveals forms that light in turn hides. The shadow is also a reflection, by default.
The volumes that detach from the axis host the private areas for resting and reflection. In the centre of the house, under the branches that extend from the big tree are the shared social areas shaded by a catenary.
And there is water, water that caresses the inhabited space.
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