The house is a structural box supported on four points with average spans of about 7 meters and cantilevers. Its elements such as columns, and ribbed slabs... are balanced with counterweights, highlighting gravity. At the same time, the load transmission to the ground is carried out on four points.
Description of project by Edwin Hurtado + Holger Cuadrado
The concept of a house seen from the traditional point of view is a thing of the past. Aspects that were once considered important are now relegated to the background because it has been understood that the life contained within is the most valuable condition. The D4 house is conceived according to three main strategies that define the project.
The structure is the architecture.
The house is an abstract structural box of 4 levels supported on 4 points, with 7.15m spans and 4.70m overhangs. Its elements, columns, ribbed slabs, diaphragms, and beam handrails, are balanced by counterweights (overhangs), highlighting gravity as a universal resource of architecture. At the same time, the transmission of loads to the ground on 4 supports frees the space, generating order and a wide interior spatiality.
Spatial flexibility as an attribute.
The project was designed as a space container capable of accommodating indeterminate programs in its interior, incorporating two flexible sanitary cores that allow for variations and adaptations in the future. The external lateral staircase is a key element considering that it can be replicated on the upper floors to make each floor independent and distribute new uses: housing, offices, consulting rooms...
The site suggests how to build the architecture.
Beyond building a physical object, architecture builds places for life and relationships with its surroundings. Because of its sense of permanence, these relationships -connections- have to be opportune and contribute to the interior life of the building. The house is located on a hill at 2300 meters above sea level in the low Ecuadorian Andes as a threshold space -an open box-, intercepting the distant landscape of the mountain range and the city of Loja over the valley at 2100 meters above sea level, thus taking advantage of solar incidence on both fronts.
