Beginning with the most rudimentary elements of architecture, the wall, the column and the beam, or in this case a truss, the house starts with the idea of using those distinctive structural elements as a basis for its existence. How can form be born out of their expression, their amplification, and a dependence on their basic primary functions, as structure?

The answer to this question lies in the house’s ability to navigate a sloped terrain, we saw this as a balancing act between structural solidity and effortless lightness, firmitas and venustas. The two load bearing walls of the house’s pitch are firmly planted parallel to the slope, acting as retaining walls for the soil. Perpendicular walls work to carry the spaces above and the extended exterior canopy. Columns accentuate the verticality and also work to brace the pitched roof. The truss carries the pitch on two sides, the diagonals of the truss creating the angles of the pitched roof itself. All of this is working in harmony as a structural machine that creates something familiar but destabilizing. A house that at once feels so solid and yet like at any second it could also blow over in the wind. Utilizing structure not simply because we must but distilling the elements down to their pure structural function, allows us to then see these elements as the basis of a game for creating form and space, a kind of Calder balancing act.

The concrete of the house is a homogenizing material, allowing all structural elements to be discretely expressed, but uniform. The main actor then becomes light and the subtle accents of materiality in more pragmatic functions like cabinetry, tables, a cushion, a curtain. This also allows the focus to always radiate outward to the incredible landscape, with precise views on the sides and in the courtyard of the house, distinct vistas of the forests of its context. The slope also works its way into the house as a series of terraces that subtly work to create rooms without using walls as partition, maintaining that all walls of the house are strictly structural. A true example of how the creation of limitations can have boundless consequences.

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