Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza has completed Colien House, a three-storey concrete home embedded into a hill that overlooks a beach in Barcelona.
Made from orange-tinted exposed concrete, Siza designed each floor in the house with an outdoor terrace to extend the internal spaces and provide a connection with the surrounding sloped terrain and nearby sea.
“The central purpose was to answer the programme proposal made by the client by including a careful embodiment of the landscape, complying with the specific local rules and the relation of each of the four floors’ elevation with the natural topography,” Siza told Dezeen.
Each house level offers a terrace that amplifies the interior space, while relishing the landscape’s natural beauty and the 180-degree view from east to west.
Siza designed Colien House to have a compact layout that steps into the landscape, intending to minimise the built impact on the site.
The street entrance is located on the top floor, where there is also a garage and a planted outdoor terrace overlooking the surroundings.
“The terrace on the entrance floor has a particular nature – it is the first and last impression to those who live and visit the house,” said Siza.
“It seemed fitting to have a garden,” he continued. “It is a solution that has good conduct from the thermal perspective.”
Below the entrance, on the second floor, is the kitchen, living room and dining room, and the first floor contains the bedrooms.
Colien House’s bottom level contains a study, bathroom and laundry room, and its outdoor terrace extends beyond the shade of the terrace above to have a swimming pool overlooking the sea.
Estremoz marble lines the bathrooms, kitchens and outdoor areas on the terraces and swimming pool, creating a contrast against the orange-tinted concrete. Elsewhere in the home, floors were covered with chestnut wood.
Other projects by Siza with blocky, angular forms include a white-concrete extension to a renovated monastery in Porto and an extension to a gallery in Porto he designed in 1999.
The photography is by Pedro Cardigo.
Project credits:
Architect: Álvaro Siza
Local partner: Aresta A+U
Engineering: GOP, Gabinete de Obras e Projectos
Structural engineering: Jorge Nunes da Silva
Electricity, telecommunications and security: Alexandre Martins
Hydraulics: Raquel Fernandes
HVAC: Raul Bessa
Builder: Construccions Arcadi
