Spanish architecture firm José Luis Muñoz built this irregular two-colored holiday house by taking into consideration of the climatic conditions of the site in Cadiz, Spain.

Called La Casa de los Vientos, the house was designed for four-member family to meed their demands for the next generations of the family. The architects was commissioned to cut off the building cost up to 600€/m2 as well as to reduce the floor area while keeping the basic need program. 

"As an architect, the challenge was exciting: creating a new project to build a home as decent as the prior proposal for the same family, in the very same place and starting with three times less the budget planned for the initial project," said the studio.

The new project is approached as an answer to the place and the expectations of the users in terms of leisure, comfort and economical adjustment. 

To do so, the architects followed some key principles in the project and during the construction. The she of the house emerged from the orientation, from the prevailing winds and from the premise of enjoyment of the outside spaces and their views.

The architects created modest architecture and used simple materials. They accepted austerity in terms of creating beauty that is also found in the inexpensive.

"The built-up volume and the spaces’ geometry arise from the orientation, the logic of prevailing winds and the views to the sea, the peñón de Gibraltar, Morocco and the Sotogrande beaches," added the architects. 

The house, covering a total of 193,5-square-metre area, contains two floors, minimal and necessary in the inside, and offering a maximal use of the outdoor spaces. A sort of porches, terraces, windbreak walls and balconies shape a volume offering outdoor spaces to be used all days of the year, depending on the direction of the winds.

The studio places the resting spaces on the ground floor. The upper level hosts two outdoor enjoyment spaces. On the one hand, the Terraza de Levante, which occupies a horizontal platform with two benches and the pool, SE oriented. 

The form of this volume protects it from the Poniente, the prevailing and colder wind of the area. On the other hand, the Terraza de Poniente is located on the roof and protected of the Levante wind by a windbreak wall. The views from this terrace open over the peñón de Gibraltar and Morocco.

The structure of the building is developed on the basis of load-bearing walls made of honeycomb clay blocks and reinforced concrete, both exposed in the ground floor and reinforced in central points by means of concrete pillars. First floor volume is made of a structure of reinforced concrete in pillars and slab in roof and enclosures, also made of honeycomb clay blocks. 

As these are more exposed to the winds, they are coated with white-coloured waterproof rendering mortar. The good weather conditions of the place allow the use of 29 cm tick thermal clay as enclosure, without needing more insulation reinforcement.

Both indoors and outdoors, honesty has been at the core of all construction choices. The thermal clay and concrete wall structure shows up sincere, creating interesting contrasts with the painted plaster of the partition walls inside. This contact, expressly highlighted, creates a dialog of materials showing all the phases of the construction process.

Due to the strong budget restrictions, both for the project and the construction, an exhaustive exercise of management and economic monitoring was assumed and required from the beginning of the creative process of the intervention.

Project facts

Location: La Línea de la Concepción, Cádiz, Spain

Client: Antonio Castillo López

Built area: 193.5 m2

Project date: 2015

Collaborators: Marta Reguera Gutiez (student), Sara Pavón Castillero (arquitect).

Company construction: Mellado Romero Construcciones

Civil engineer: Alberto Roldán Maldonado

Cost: 127.500 euros

All images © Javier Callejas Sevilla

> via José Luis Muñoz