The burrow by delaVegaCanolasso

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Architects: delaVegaCanolasso
Location: Madrid, España
Team: Ignacio de la Vega, Pilar Cano-Lasso
Client: Private
Area: 50m2
Project year: 2019
Video: Dr.cato
Photos: Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero), Pilar Cano-Lasso

How we’ll live together depends on how our way of living affects the others, the relationship between human’s intrinsic privacy and social living. The meaning of “home” and it’s dialogue with the surroundings.

From the first caves, it took centuries to conquer the house’s privacy. Fresh courtyards, meandering accesses, accurate shadows. The correct use of light and view, little openings in thick walls.

Today’s architecture has forgotten the importance of privacy and has succumbed to exhibitionism. Great windows in thin walls looking nowhere ,showing everything. Changing mystery for the evident.

“La madriguera (the burrow)” pretends to get the house back to its essence, claiming the importance of the introverted against the extroverted.

The house as a lair, a hideout, a shelter. A reflection which distorts and expands the garden, while confuses and protects. I can not guess the inside, a bit closer, now i can peep through the great silver oculus drilling the reflection.

But, What´s inside? a woman looks herself in a mirror, in a garden, immersed in a pond. The opposite view, from the inside, is fully covered with vegetation, a pond full of water and flowers flooding the view through the oculus.

The reflective element hosts the most private spaces of the house, the bedroom and toilet, with controlled openings on it, allowing effective lighting and ventilation while avoiding the direct views from the outside. Introverted and cozy, the burrow´s essence.

The rest of the house´s uses, kitchen-dining, living and studio, are concentrated in the contiguous volume, former painting workshop. As a strategy, the custom made furniture is placed in the perimeter, ensuring the maximum free area and avoiding the circulation space. Its translucent roof, drowns it with zenithal light all day long.

For its construction, a structural solution with a quick assembly was chosen, a galvanised steel substructure wrapped with OSB (recycled wood) boards. The skin is completed with natural cork and recycled cotton as thermal insulation. The insideis lined with pine wood, wrapping it up warm and making it more welcoming.

The oculus, as well as all the window frames are fully made in brushed galvanised steel, which reflects and blurs the incoming light. On the roof, two skylights of this same material, are opened to the sky, bathing the space with light.