by michelangeli design SL.
“It’s not a summer house or a studio, it’s a sculpture in which I want to live. “That’s what the artist behind this project wants. A sculptor with sharp strokes, playing with polyhedral surfaces, he provoked this approach from which an artistic collaboration was born to create this 500 sqm living space. Located to the south of Madrid, near Toledo, on a 60-hectare olive grove, the project began with a long conversation between the artist and the architect about the Land Art approach. Are the walls just walls, or dynamic spaces that resonate with Olivier’s rows?
This is where the basis of the project comes from. A set of vectors deliberately oriented according to the different contextual elements of the site, allowing for privacy without the obligation to fence off the land, the orientation of the views in the perspective of the Castle of the Village of Guadamur (XV Century), the framework of the Olive Trees, the protection from the very strong winds on the elevated part of the land and the projection of a cast shadow that allows the building to shade itself.
These lines on the ground, these traces in the earth, these “vectors of life” create a play of fullness and emptiness between each vector, allowing the creation of the patio necessary for distribution, the privacy of the space, the intake of 2nd daylight and the thermal regulation of the house.
The building then rises, with the first level sheltering the Artist’s suite. In the form of one of his sculptures, a polyhedral cloud, worked in collaboration with the architect. This sculpted volume rests delicately on the lower vectors, without crushing them. From the outset, the aim of the project was to create a levitating space above the foliage of the Olive trees.
Then comes the work on the material. The project breaks away from the standards of the “White House” to resonate with the red earth of the region, and the materials of the vectors will be studied to give a sensation of vertical extension to the clay soil of the area. The faces of the upper volumes will be treated with a ceramic complex, a signature material of the region but used in a contemporary way.
This is how the project finds its balance, between the poetry of the material and its expression. Trying to blend into the fabric of the olive trees, but re-emerging to definitevely make its mark, like a living sculpture.
Category:Vacation HomesYear:2024Location:Guadamur, Toledo, Castilla la Mancha, Spain Architects:michelangeli design SL. Lead Architect: Jérôme Michelangeli Design Team: Lluvia Martinez, Pedro Perez de Castro, and Lola BellosilloClient: FELIPAOPhotographer: Courtesy of the Architects