Our projects In Natura Veritas and Three Gardens House will compete for awards at the World Architecture Festival (WAF) 2017, after being shortlisted in their respective categories.

Thus, our proposal for the renovation and musealization of 18 Galician-Roman sites in Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain, In Natura Veritas, currently under development, will fight for the prize in the Culture – Future Projects category, while the single-family dwelling Three Gardens House, in Kuwait, will do so in the House – Completed Buildings category.

Winners will be announced in November in Berlin, home of the current edition of the Festival. World Building of the Year and Future Project of the Year winners will be made public then, selected from winners of each category.

In Natura Veritas

The proposal In Natura Veritas takes as its starting point the intrinsic nature of the proposed program: the creation of a space for the preservation of memory in a natural environment chosen as a living place hundreds of years ago. The proposal enhances the apprehension of the natural and archaeological landscape, bringing the observer closer to nature but also to that imagined and projected abstract world, through a non-formal intervention. As a natural museum, it recreates the memory of landscape through the maintenance, consolidation and recovery of the lost native vegetation.

In order to do this, a guiding proposal, an abstract system composed of different layers, is established with the intention of transferring ad hoc knowledge for each of the sites, integrating them into a unique network for the interpretation of the Galician archaeological landscape. 

Three Gardens House

This detached house is designed to enjoy the outside space throughout the year.

We stratified the external uses according to the period of the year and the hours of the day in which these activities could be developed, and accordingly we designed three gardens.

The first one is a Wet Garden on ground floor, which allows us to activate related spaces during the hottest periods. The pool and some fountains are located in this garden, which is surrounded by the main social spaces of the house.

The Summer Garden stands in the coldest layer, 4 meters below street level. Protected by the soil’s thermal mass and the projected shadows of the housing volume, a large sheet of water is placed to catalyze the evapotranspiration that -through convection- rises and refreshes the air towards upper spaces.

The third one lies on the roof, an ideal place for winter days and hot summer nights. A perforated skin covers the Winter Garden, avoiding direct solar radiation and raising the privacy of its inhabitants.

These three gardens become unified as a single outer space and are connected -visually and physically- through exterior stairs; we begin to develop the rest of the home from the generation of the aforementioned voids, articulating the program of required uses around them.

For further information:

WAF 2017 Culture-Future Projects Shortlist

WAF 2017 House-Completed Buildings Shortlist

In Natura Veritas

Three Gardens House