House on the Mist / Alfonso Arango – 【Architectural CAD Drawings】

Architect: Alfonso Arango
Location: La Calera, Colombia
Area: 24.0 m2
Project Year: 2018
Photographer: Courtesy of Alfonso Arango

Garden Cover: María Camila Moreno
Work Administration: David Peñaloza

Text description provided by the architects. The House on the Mist is an adjacent project to the architect’s family house. There, a minimal dimensions house is proposed with enough room to accommodate a couple.

The Project is located between Colombia´s capital, Bogotá, and La Calera. The site is characterized by high slope topography due the mountainous bodies of the Andes region. At the distance, you can watch San Rafael’s reservoir, surrounded by mountains that goes as far as the eye can see.

The house is settled in a low slope area avoiding the unnecessary modification of the natural soil. Because of the region weather conditions, very cold and humid nights, the house is rotated forty-five degrees from the north to gather as much sun as possible all year long.

Two square slabs of 4.2 meters long compose the house: one roof and one that touches the ground, both connected by a vertical axis that aims to return the water that comes from the sky to the ground through the entire house. At the first level is the kitchen, bathroom and social area, while the mezzanine is dedicated to the bedroom.

El material de cerramiento es madera de pino cultivada en la región, tratada con productos de procesos antiquísimos de pirólisis de resinas orgánicas derivadas del pino mismo. Técnica utilizada para calafatear embarcaciones en tiempos pasados. En la fachada nor-oriental se dispone un muro en vidrio-bloque que permite el ingreso y difumina los rayos del sol de la mañana.

The enclosure material is pine tree wood, growth in the region, treated with the products of organic resin pyrolysis that comes from the pine tree itself. Technique used long ago to waterproof fishing boats. On the northeast façade, a glass-brick wall is located in order to allow and filter the morning sun beams.

Once the main door is opened, the cold winds that came down from the mountain are impregnated with a subtle eucalyptus scent that remains on the house interior.

Contrasting with the dark exterior, the interior is conceived in a lighter tonality: wooden surfaces cover the walls, supported by a white floor, complemented with teak wood windows extruded to the outside that frames the childhood’s landscape. At night, the window that tops the main entrance plays its role as a lamp; projecting a weak light cone that lightens the entry as a symbol that someone on the inside is waiting patiently for the return of his loved ones.

In spite of that the house is connected to the electric system to ensure the modern life’s benefits, candles have played a fundamental role while thinking the House on the Mist. On rainy nights, the electric fluid goes off constantly, making a great opportunity to grab a book and let you shroud yourself in the tender heat of the candles flame. During the day, and in half-light, the house itself is wrapped in a brume-like light that is easy with the eyes and comforts the heart.

The roof is proposed as a high garden where birds and winds bring a wide variety of seeds and spores of the endemic flora, allowing free and spontaneous vegetation growth of a garden a few meters near the skies.

The House on the Mist is a place to be lonely at the mountains, a place to ease your thoughts and feel covered by the memory of those who are not longer here. A shelter from the mist.

“Therefore, the places in which we have experienced daydreaming reconstitute themselves in a new daydream, and it is because our memories of former dwelling-places are relived as daydreams that these dwelling-places of the past remain in us for all time.”
Bachelard. The poetics of space.