The Silicon House by architects Selgas Cano is deceptively urban. Both surrounded by and covered in trees and plant life, you would be forgiven for thinking it was a stylish country retreat. Yet aerial pictures reveal that the house resides in a (albeit quieter) neighbourhood in the Spanish capital of Madrid. Through several sleights of hand the architects have shown the potential for the home to be a space of complete privacy and calm, even in an avowedly urban setting.
This is most notable in the home’s interaction with its surroundings. The architects have expertly leveraged the woody environs. It strategically weaves its way in between the oaks, chestnuts, elms and acacias dotted around the property.
In the architects’ statement, the respect for the pre-existing environment is palpable. “In the building process,” they note, “all the existing trees were respected and only one branch of an oak was broken by the arm of a concrete pump”. After making a point of reassuring us that no trees were harmed, they then go on to list the trees that were added, and it’s quite a list. Their aim: to have the house barely visible from afar, and really ensconced in nature.
Besides the use of trees and vegetation, the architects have also created seclusion through their unusual decision to have the floor of the building begin a metre and a half below ground level. Having the windows looking so close to the ground seems to invite closer inspection of the trees outside. It also shifts the focus away from a distant landscape and toward the immediate surroundings. Aside from this, something about having to descend below ground to get into the home also lends a cosy, unobtrusive feel to the interior, as if you’re entering a big nest.
Also notable is the sheer number and variety of modern mid-century furniture throughout the house. As well as lending a vibrancy to the interior, these additions also serve as an interesting echo of the diverse array of tree varieties outdoors. To name a few, there are several Eames DSS chairs around the dining table, a Saarinen Tulip Chair, and several Bauhaus or Bauhaus-influenced chairs (the clue’s in the tubular steel).
Considering the mission to blend with nature, the palette is on the whole quite colourful. In the hands of lesser architects this could seriously detract from the effort to correspond with the outdoors. But the greyish white base paint running throughout the house sufficiently diminishes the potential for the bright hues to seem lurid. This is only enhanced by the openness and sense of free flow created in the overall design.
Photos by Antonio Terron
The success of the house is perhaps best explained in the architects’ explanation. “Le Corbusier left a vacuum in his architecture so that nature would populate it. This project is born in opposition to this idea. It is nature that leaves us a gap and there, and only there, we populate it with something artificial that is architecture.” This admission has allowed for a sensitive but distinctly authentic design.
