A Home as a Vital Space

Madrid, Spain

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A Home as a Vital Space

Madrid, Spain

Firm

Hollegha Arquitectos

Type

Residential › Private House

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2012

SIZE

3000 sqft - 5000 sqft

This modular house in Miraflores de la Sierra in Madrid is a cooperation between Madrid-based studio Hollegha Arquitectos and the German eco-house pioneer Baufritz. It was built in 2012 as the first construction using the Baufritz system on spanish territory. The prefab elements provided by Baufritz and produced in their EMAS-awarded plant in Bavaria, Germany, guarantee a completely pollutant-free indoor climate as well as a very high level of sustainability.

As an architectural firm, the relationship with Baufritz enables us to offer our clients top-quality ecological architecture almost without design restrictions. More and more people look for homes that are built with the environment in mind but that also are comfortable for humans. Toxic emissions of building materials, as well as electromagnetic radiation inside our houses, can seriously harm our health or at least provoke chronic discomfort (headaches, sleeplessness, allergies, etc.). Baufritz has a team of more than 20 biologists specializing in construction who stay up-to-date on and develop current materials and systems.

Sustainability is not a topic we choose, it is part of our lives and should be as natural and obvious to us as, for example, nutrition. One of the most important functions of architecture in society is its influence over peoples’ lifestyles. It is a responsibility to increase society’s sensibility for environmental issues.

The single-family house in Miraflores is a two-story building with a big living room on the ground floor and four bedrooms. The ventilated wooden façade is treated only with natural resin, and the one-foot sandwich wall hiding behind is composed of 100-percent natural materials, mainly wood. Two special features are the cradle-to-cradle ecologic thermal insulation “Hoiz” and the grounded natural plaster panel “Xund” that protects the inside of the building from electromagnetic fields.

The garden, apart from the beetroot, lettuce, and aromatic herbs growing, is dominated by a biological swimming pool that recreates a natural ecosystem to keep the water clean. An ordinary tiled basin, comfortable for swimming, is connected to two other reservoirs, one with aquatic plants and one filled with gravel, that filter and regenerate the water, without any chemicals. The owner’s shepherd dog Chino loves to consider it his private drinking water supply.