Casa al bosc
0924-MIE-PMI.ES-2014.15
Architect: MIEL Arquitectos
Status: Project (2014)
Visualizer: Play-Time architectonic images
Budget: 315.000 €
Scale: 225 ㎡ Small
Ratio: 1.400,00 €/㎡
Types: House, Residential

CASA AL BOSC is the result of adapting the needs of an urban active life to the archetype dream of the house in the forest

A ramp overtakes the first slope of the plot, linking the net of roads with the access terrace of the house for people and cars (only spot where the house touches the ground), where also dry clothes or even play ball.

This platform coincides with the most social area of the house: access, half-bathroom, living and dining room and the kitchen, but also the most technique one with the laundry, engine room and the garage – workshop. The other side, levitating by its 3 facades, organizes through a storage corridor (wardrobes from 2,10m to 3,00m) 3 double bedrooms, 1 bathroom and the main bedroom with bath on suite.

The white and ethereal appearance from the outside, white canvas where pine shadows paint, turns warm and physique inside proudly showing the wood who forms it.

Its broken shape, due to a succession of open courtyards, powers the natural lighting and air circulation all around the house. This is one the reasons, together with the high isolation of the covering, why CASA AL BOSC holds the best Energy efficiency Qualification -A-, getting the highest comfort with the lowest energy use.

From the balcony – summer dining room a metal stairs allows us going down to the natural terrain and use it as a wild garden.

Building report

The walls of the ramp and access terrace are done with dry riprap stones (1), the foundations of the house are steel piers screw in the terrain (2) without adding concrete or modifying the environment. A grid of structural profiles HEB (3) link the foundations with the habitable box of prefabricated radiata pine panels (4), avoiding any contact between the terrain or the riprap wall.

This body of prefabricated panels isolates itself from the outside through different thickness and density of mineral wool: 14cm at facades (5), 20cm inside the floor (6) and ceiling (7) and 5cm extra at the roof (8). The covering of the house finish with Larch wood windows and shutters (9) (non-biodegradable wood), organic whitewash on the walls (5) and a thin layer of gravel at the roof (8).

At the inside complementing the pine walls, ceiling and floor, there is a minimum percentage of drywalls. The installations, lead by a pellets boiler, flow under the grid of structural profiles arriving visible to each terminal or inside the drywalls.

This house contributes is a logic reduction of the building process, with a decrease of the budget and a time reduction of the building site, as well a step forward to the eco-efficacy:

– The wood that forms the structure and inside image, it’s extracted from forests with a certificate of sustainable management (PEFC), on top of their proximity (Basque Country or France). At the end of their useful life forming this house could be unscrewed and reused again with another composition or choped and feed a biomass boiler.
– The footprint of the house is only 20% of its occupation, being all the house levitating and the access terrace made of filter gravel, not modifying the run-off of the terrain.
– The rain water is accumulated in a cistern for watering.
– The inside painting as well as the outside whitewash are ecologic (based of natural matter of mineral origin), not damaging the environment during the extraction or to his users along their life. Joined to this ones we have the Larch wood windows and shutters, not needing any chemical treatment to be outside because is a non-biodegradable wood.

The final result is a light and strong house, made with natural materials being kind with the environment and its inhabitants, built in less than 6 months, managed without air conditioned and needing 5 times less heating than a standard house, floats over the natural terrain releasing a wild garden able to be improved and definitively makes live a sensory experience closely related to the natural environment covering us.

Consultant: Carme Aguiló | Post date: 03/08/2014 | Views: 3.105