Architects: Pezo von Ellrichshausen

Location: Cretas, Teruel, Spain

Architects In Charge: Mauricio Pezo, Sofia von Ellrichshausen
Area: 313 sqm
Year: 2013
Photographs: Cristobal Palma / Estudio Palma
Collaborators: Diogo Porto, Bernhard Maurer, Valeria Farfan, Eleonora Bassi, Ana Freeze
Builder: Ferras Prats
Structural Consultant: Jose Perez
Building Services: Ineco, Pablo Rived
From the architect. This unique entity occupies a dominant position in a rural landscape of
vineyards and olive groves, set against a general background of medieval villages and rocky
outcrops. A bare horizontal volume is detached from the ground, suspended in an almost
archaic time.
Transparent and monolithic, the building is balanced on top of a blind pedestal, in such a way
that its outline is divided between an elevated portion visible from a distance and another that
disappears behind the leaves of native plant species. The aerial realm of the platform indicates
the cardinal points. A panoramic perimeter ring punctuated by sixteen columns placed at regular
intervals accommodates a sequence of rooms with undefined functions.
These crystalline, symmetrical living spaces are mutually independent and are linked by four
open terraces at their corners. This portico is too narrow to contain a static living room and too
deep for a balcony- cum-viewing platform. In this aerial realm, the only closed room (in the
center) is not roofed; its four walls are perforated at their central point, while the floor is of water
(the gentlest paving known to man), which reflects the sky.
After going along a sloping straight path, a bifurcated set of steps shapes the entrance; entering
the house is like going into a twin tunnel that encircles the central swimming pool , with small
openings set diagonally that allow glimpses of sky across the water. Under thisaccess level a
building services passageway goes around a room without use (and with scant overhead
lighting).
The volume unity has something of the generic schema about it; its monumentally risky
structure disappears in the outlines of its mass. It would seem that when Chilean theoretician
Juan Borchers said that architecture was physics incarnate, he was speaking not only of loads
and tensions, but of life itself, which erases their effort.