We started with the idea that an owner or designer of a private house will never have complete control over the urban condition that surrounds the property. A various number of uncontrollable factors—pollution, lack of maintenance, and even undesirable neighbors—can keep the house from looking the way the owner wants it to.
So we proposed a house that’s defensive. A house that’s inward looking, with the back facing the street, and whose spaces are all oriented towards its own controlled environment—in this case, a courtyard in the heart of the house. By doing this, the spaces between the street and the courtyard become visual and auditory barriers that protect the private courtyard from being degraded by harshness that our urban jungle creates such as noise from traffic, pollution, undesireable views, etc. We further articulated the concept by placing a series of walls around the courtyard, acting as if they were hugging and shielding the internal environment of the house from the outside world, made even more expressive by arraying these fins in shifting angles.
Project Team : Principal Architect – Jason Buensalido; Associate Architect / Lead Project Architect – Ems Eliseo, Project Architect – Cholo Ramirez