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House on the Cliff

Jesús Granada

A house to enjoy landscape and company.


With the sea as a soundtrack, the camera approaches the Spanish coast near Granada before revealing a very particular building emerging from a steep slope. It’s a home, and is realized for enjoying company and the landscape. Using aerial views and close-up footage merged with still imagery, the short film sheds light on the most essential qualities of the building.

The house is designed by GilBartolomé Architects. The video documents the exterior first. The building is mostly buried, and only the roof appears on the ground displaying its particular forms. As the architects say: "The form of the house and the metallic roof produces a calculated aesthetic ambiguity between the natural and the artificial, between the skin of a dragon set in the ground, when seen from below, and the waves of the sea, when seen from above."

The roof, a curved double shell of reinforced concrete, is sustained by the perimetral walls, with no other internal supports or partitions; "thanks to this - the architects explain - the main space of the house, organized into designed islands of activity, can also become a stage and an auditorium for 70 people, also handy to host large parties, completely open to the landscape and with an ancillary terrace separated by a movable glass facade." The interior ceiling is also irregular, as if being in a "gaudiesque contemporary cave" with its sinuous surface defining the roof, while curving and lifting to form irregular windows that frame the landscape.

The architects, in developing the project, also considered social issues: in a period when the building construction realm was affected by a financial crisis, they decided to avoid industrial construction systems and preferred labour-intensive techniques and local workers’ involvement, to help boost the economy.

Credits

Architect: GilBartolomé ADW
Mentioned project: Casa Del Acantilado (2014)
Project location: Salobreña, Spain
Photographer: Jesús Granada
Drone operator: Lorenzo Tirado

Spain 2015
Duration: 5'03''