Living in Cabo de Gata

There were a series of basic criteria that were established as a starting point for this project in order to obtain a clear result:

To provide the site with all the interests of architecture and to bring together its climatic and cultural tools with the local tradition and all the traditions of other similar sites for any condition, which we consider useful to solve the problems that the site has.

To try not to design any need to import mannequins, own or external to it and to keep in the project any aesthetic and social potential that is not necessary.

Surrender the selection of the facade material to physical effectiveness criteria (obtain the best performance - the result with the least consumption - effort, i.e. find the least possible entropy), and let it emerge from the final appearance of the building.

We have sought an architecture for the site, open to the world to gather all the knowledge that is useful for your specific situation.

Thus, the references we took into account when drawing the houses were not only those that correspond to our education:

The house has a low passage in the street below the village.

The flocks of sheep in summer, which all gathered together to shade each other.

The pitas that keep the humidity low and emerge strongly towards the sky.

Traditional villages visited in Almeria.

The houses excavated in a desert in China, we saw them in a magazine.

Farmland on the slopes surrounding the project.

Houses in North African lands.

The pavilion houses and gardens of Zhejiang.

Hassan Fathy ventilation arrangements.

Hydraulic mechanisms of Juanelo Turriano.

. . . and an infinity of things, which, not to mention their origin, we cannot name and therefore could seem to be our own events.

In this desert by the sea, vegetation survives mainly on morning dew, but the soil remains moist until the sun rises or the westerly wind begins to blow. The different plant species generally share a common strategy: to make a very light shade around their roots and develop a thick skin to preserve internal humidity.

Client:
Volcan Azul S.L.

Design team:
Sergio Álvarez, in collaboration with Cesar Cabanas

Surveyor:
Juan Diego Guarderas

Structural engineer:
Jesús I. Hernández

Services engineer:
Antonio Moreno

Models:
Sergio Alvarez