The house works with two seemingly opposite conditions: opening completely to the environment and, at the same time, generating protected spaces from which to contemplate it.

This duality allows to work with proportion as a fundamental tool of the project. The two upper floors are divided into three volumes, favoring a more horizontal reading of the spaces and reinforcing their relationship with the landscape that frames them.

The project, currently under construction, seeks to combine openness and protection through a more contained scale in the night zone, generating more human and intimate spaces that respond to the way their users inhabit.

Casa Torii is configured from a very concrete condition of the place: access takes place from the highest level of the plot, from where an impressive view of the alcornocales opens up. This situation determines the organization of the entire project.

The house is built from a foundation that contains two floors, where the garage, an indoor sports area and the bedrooms are located, linked to a sheet of water and a garden surrounded by oaks. This base is materialized with a natural stone of green tone, typical of the area, reinforcing its relationship with the land and the landscape.

On this base is a large shaded piece, supported only on two walls and extended through two large lateral wings. These wings serve a double function: on the one hand, they generate shade and protection both for pedestrian access and for vehicle access; on the other, they structurally compensate for the large opening existing between the two walls.

In this way, the upper floor becomes a large open and open space, open at its ends towards the views of the alcornocales and dedicated to the daytime area.

A set of very simple operations—a base linked to the land, two walls and a large suspended piece—results in a complex spatiality, in which structure, landscape and form respond to the same logic.

A thin sheet that folds over the slope to capture the landscape and generate protected spaces from which to enjoy Ibiza.

The dwelling is conceived as a single piece capable of resolving structure, program, shadow and relationship with the land. Its geometry extends to create sun-protected areas, intermediate spaces where interior and exterior seem to form part of the same room.

From the interior, the house expands the field of vision through a succession of open spaces to the horizon, making the landscape present from different points. From the bottom, however, the piece reduces its presence to maintain the natural reading of the slope.

The project thus proposes a protected place from which to look, walk around and enjoy the island of Ibiza, establishing a continuous relationship between architecture, land and landscape.

We are interested in thinking about architectures that, in some way, disappear.

Architectures that find their place in the environment until becoming part of it. That seem to emerge from the landscape itself and adapt to its geometry, its vegetation, its light and its views, trying to alter as little as possible what already exists.

We are particularly interested in this mimetic condition, in which the very materiality of the place is incorporated into architecture until its limits almost disappear. A continuity between the built and the existing that makes architecture perceptible as something that has always belonged to that place. Sometimes disappearing means extending the landscape over a roof or using the own material of the environment.

This attitude seems especially appropriate to us in certain contexts: an architecture that does not seek to impose itself on the landscape, but to be part of it. When this happens, architecture and environment cease to be understood as two distinct realities and begin to build the same reality.

Architecture is present, but almost disappears. And perhaps it is precisely then when its relationship with the place reaches one of its purest expressions.

How can we transform obstacles into order?

This project is located in the Iraq Gate Garden apartments in Baghdad and responds to the premise proposed by using the blank space—the void—as a structural element. It originates from carving useful spaces like in a quarry.

The pre-existing elements include all types of load-bearing elements, the result of the union of four houses into one. The strategy consists in grouping these elements, which were initially conceived as a series of barriers, into solid blocks; thus, they become modules that generate a continuous and fluid negative space, designed to allow flexible communication and habitation between them.

The idea of using partitions to divide main spaces, as well as imposing rigid boundaries between adjacent rooms, has become obsolete.

Except for existing structures, vertical elements have not been used to divide main spaces, thus reimagining the original space to achieve effective beauty that makes the most of what is given.