Excerpt: Villa Luciérnagas by Apaloosa Estudio de Arquitectura y Diseño and Valdez arquitectos is an architecture project that houses families and tourists through applications such as Airbnb. The villa meets the goals of generating experiences for its sporadic users; however, the main focus of the project is waste treatment and energy usage to return the investment of the clients.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] The project’s main design strategy lies in the user’s connection with the coniferous reserve adjacent to the land; this will only be modified by changing the user’s visual horizon and allocating activities.
This project is designed to house families and tourists through applications such as Airbnb. The project meets the goals of generating experiences for its sporadic users; however, the treatment of waste and the use of energy are vital to returning the investment of the clients.
The designers had the advantage of gaining prior access to the apartment area; this area is a sheet metal warehouse where customers store cars and serves as a shed. This module generated a large area for the placement of solar panels, both to generate electricity and to heat the water in the bathrooms.
Likewise, it was decided to reuse a 5,000-litre cistern that was on the site and now works for rainwater collection, watering the gardens, and cleaning the apartments. Without forgetting the treatment of black water with a biodigester, this irrigates its grey water towards the internal side gardens.
“El poder del emplazamiento”, as Le Corbusier professes in his book ‘Towards an Architecture,’ was elemental in this project. From considering side accesses that do not touch the pre-existing adjoining walls to the brief separation between departments that confine a corridor and, in turn, are subdivided with logs of wood from the site, this narrow access route breaks with the central courtyard of each apartment, which in turn functions as secondary access to them.
Most of the project was resolved using rigid reinforced concrete frames and block masonry from the region; however, there is a characteristic structural solution that is immediately appreciated as soon as it is accessed: the fully reinforced wall in BTC (compacted earth block), which contains 3/8″ rods every 60 cm and is confined with reinforced concrete enclosing chains. It should be noted that the fastening of these earth blocks is made with white adhesive (commonly known as Resistol) and is grouted or jointed with the dust of the same BTC.
By placing the apartments in separate bodies, the designers have the opportunity to generate reinforced concrete foundation slabs with a structure in rigid reinforced concrete frames and consequently their slabs.
The constructive system that attracts attention and stands out in the plastic of the project is the BTC system (compacted earth block), which leaves its partitions and joints exposed since the process works as a fully reinforced wall with 3/8” rods cast with concrete thanks to the series of alveoli in the partition that function as a “trachea”.
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