Climatic and programmatic possibilities, along with geometrical conditions resulted in the architect's strategy of peripheral occupation for the VL House. Filling all of the setbacks with simple activities, the effective program of the house could then be contained in a thick line around these borders.
This plan created a much desired central void and generated a Patio-House as a way to create a controlled microclimate, and to be able to look back at the existing fabric of the city. It also opened the building to an existing park in front of the lot.
This main patio situated around the center of the plan defines and controls specific climatic problems, high temperatures and humidity. It is this central garden that creates a unique life in the spaces around it, as it allows for spatial relationships in all of its sections. Walking in and walking out can be part of a single operation making the programmatic spaces become intermediate areas, dissolving the interior and exterior categories in the experience.
The segregation of spaces is defined by three essential elements: the patio, the stairs and the bridge. All of the spaces in the lower plan are interconnected around the presence of the garden which will be experienced through different vanishing points. Through these three elements the house looks inward and creates its own landscape.
The volumetric composition is created with simple prismatic white boxes, each of them responding to a contained program. These white stuccoed volumes are the main elements of the building opposed to the screened void of the central patio. The idea of domesticity dissolves into a more flexible and neutral spatial configuration and character.
The concepts of open/closed, interior/exterior and intermediate space is represented with aluminum lattice works in the patio and facades, designed as screens protecting from unwanted sun exposure.
The simplicity of the white boxes are a more abstract approach to a domestic language, revealing nothing of the contained functions, but discreetly facing the park across the street.
The concept for a "garden” inside the house is not an isolated patch of green, but rather a fragmented series of small territories designed with specific responsibilities.
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