Villa Boscana / OLARQ Osvaldo Luppi Architects

Architects: OLARQ Osvaldo Luppi Architects
Location: Son Vida, Spain
Lead Architects: Osvaldo Luppi
Area: 800.0 m2
Project Year: 2013
Photographs: Mauricio Fuertes

Collaborating Architect: Marc Cifre
Engineer: Fernando Purroy

An Icon
The form must be forceful. If not, it is not a form.
A double-story volume of exposed concrete is embedded in the rock generating a cantilever that occupies a third floor in the form of a wooden base.
Grey concrete, natural wood, black metal, water, rocks, and vegetation are the only elements.
The crystal pool seems to float in the same water it contains.
There are no windows, just the absence of walls.
Rocks and concrete: The stony and the stony.

Context
The house is set on a very steep land in a consolidated residential neighborhood with views to the bay of Palma de Mallorca. Maximize views and protect yourself from the gazes of neighbors. See without being seen.
Investigation
The concrete formwork has been made with phenolic panels. Pine boards of 12.5 cm high and of two variable thicknesses were nailed to those panels. A 1-meter high module was formed consisting of 8 12.5 cm high boards with alternating thicknesses. This repetition allowed rapid execution and re-use of the formwork. The random but repetitive arrangement of the different thicknesses creates shadows that break with the idea of the repetitive module. The whole house has been concreted without a single vertical concrete joint. The horizontal joints have been made to coincide with boards of different thicknesses, so they are practically invisible.

Material
Concrete wood metal glass green water light.
System
Access floor: parking spaces/garages, entrance hall, master bedroom. Public floor: living room, kitchen, dining room, covered terrace. Private floor: bedrooms, indoor pool, sauna and technical dependencies. Through high ceilings and large windows, fluid space is barely delimited.

Links
The house enhances the user’s link with nature through a non-contact contemplation. Large spaces and large surfaces of water evoke the distant but present bay: to create the landscape in a steep terrain. The access terrace is a dream experience that seeks to disconcert while evoking an ethereal security. To cause a fusion effect with the landscape, the pool is overflowing on three of its sides and the last half meter is formed by two 15 mm panes attached to a securing film.