Casa Barro Negro

Machetá, Colombia

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Other Projects by Cabida Arquitectura

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Tejo Turmequé

Casa Barro Negro

Machetá, Colombia

Firm

Cabida Arquitectura

Type

Residential › Private House

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2025

SIZE

1000 sqft - 3000 sqft

BUDGET

$100K - 500K

Casa Barro Negro stems from a fundamental conviction: contemporary architecture must continue to engage with the reuse of existing spaces and abandoned infrastructures. These pre-existing structures contain not only material value, but also the capacity to reactivate spatial and cultural legacies, offering an alternative to indiscriminate construction practices and their environmental consequences.
Casa Barro Negro originated as a restoration project centered on an old adobe house that embodied the traditional ways of inhabiting and building characteristic of the Tenza Valley region in Cundinamarca, Colombia. The existing structure preserved both the material logic and the typological conditions of rural domestic architecture, establishing a close relationship between architecture, time, and landscape. From this foundation, the project proposes an intervention that reactivates and reinterprets these inherited qualities. In contrast to the ongoing processes of modernization affecting rural housing in the region, often driven by the widespread use of industrialized materials and cement-based construction systems, the project seeks to recover local building knowledge and more sustainable material practices.
The project is defined by its strong relationship with the surrounding landscape, expressed through its materiality and through the visible passage of time embedded within the architecture itself. Landscape inevitably evokes notions of time, nature, stone, vegetation, and earth. The house’s close integration with its environment suggests a condition of transparency between object and landscape, recalling the reflections of Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky on phenomenal transparency and significant form. Simultaneously, this relationship between architecture, landscape, and time resonates with the writings of Peter Zumthor, particularly his understanding of the original essence of materials and architectures that emerge from and return to things themselves.
The domestic space is articulated through a sensory and material approach in which wood, clay, and metal are composed within a restrained palette that emphasizes texture, temporality, and tactile proximity. Natural light, together with the constant presence of the garden, introduces subtle atmospheric variations that transform the perception of the interior throughout the day, generating an experience that oscillates between domestic intimacy and the intensity of the natural environment. In this sense, the project establishes affinities with the material investigations of Joseph Beuys and Richard Serra, where matter acquires an expressive condition capable of revealing its intrinsic qualities.
The main entrance to the house is framed by an adobe ruin, the remnant of a former section of the original structure, which operates simultaneously as threshold and narrative device. Its weathered materiality bears witness to the passage of time while reaffirming the value of local materials as active agents in the construction of habitability and environmental continuity. Positioned within a logic closely related to Arte Povera, the project emphasizes the expressive capacity of the essential and the pre-existing, proposing that restoration is not opposed to innovation, but can instead enable new ways of inhabiting space and understanding domestic life.

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Casa Barro Negro

Machetá, Colombia

Other Projects by Cabida Arquitectura

Tejo Turmequé

Casa Barro Negro

Machetá, Colombia

Product Spec Sheet

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