Articles by Karen Valenzuela

On a marvelous place like a piece of earthly paradise, at Cádiz, we have built an infinite plane facing the infinite sea, the most radical house we have ever made. At the very edge of the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, where the sea unites the new and the old continent, emerges a stone platform. At the place where all the ships from the Mediterranean used to pass and still pass by as they head off into the Atlantic.

The sixty-mile-long glacial Methow Valley, in the northern Cascades of Washington state, is a special landscape, with a climate that ranges from hot, fire-prone summers to winters with heavy snow pack. It’s a true four-season landscape—the landscape I grew up in. Our clients wanted to build a second home here that would be a kind of adventure home for them and their kids. They are great parents and always undertaking adventures as a mindful, deliberate way of developing memories as a family.

This house establishes an uninterrupted ̈inside-outside ̈ relationship; a sequence of layers between the open and the intermediary. Frontal boundaries are blurred by sheets of glass and vegetation, framed by two horizontal planes, floor and ceiling, where the full and the void are related via a series of matter, water, vegetation and sky. Lateral boundaries establish the ̈full-void ̈ relationship via a series of solid materials that close transversal views.

Located on a sloping mountain ridge at the foot of the Yatsugatake Mountains, this house was designed on a piece of land that offers spectacular views that are rarely known. 

Located on a sloping mountain ridge at the foot of the Yatsugatake Mountains, this house was designed on a piece of land that offers spectacular views that are rarely known. 

The BMX Supercross Track Legacy Project from the 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games was designed and constructed to the exacting standards of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) certification board. It has been certified by this group and as such is the only track in Canada to be recognized.