GA HOUSES - n. 46 | June 1995
Photographed by Yukio Futagawa


ALBERTO KALACH | HOUSE AND GARDEN IN VALLE DE BRAVO

At the end of the callejón San Sebastian there is a big pine-wood door that leads to an even narrower alley, covered by exuberant vegetation: it is almost a tunnel. Walking around the long brick wall dug into the hillside, you enter a small dark room , under a green filtered light. This small space, always lit by an oil lamp, creates a void between the house´s interior life and the outside world.
There are two exists from the small dark room; one leads to a small tower with cells-bedrooms, connected by a vertical library that also functiona as a stairway. The other one opens on the garden.
Four platforms are inserted on the hillside overlooking the southwest zone of the valley; they float on the phosphoresent green garden, hidding behind dark trees.
One can discover the platforms, always in touch with the hillside, and walk along them, in their longest sense, with foreshortened perspectives that create the illusion of a greater profoundness. In the upermost part of the garden, between walls, lies the swimming pool area, with a perspective closed upon itself in its longitudinal sense and open to the valley in its transversal sense.
The garden is the house, it is formed by different levels of vegetation together with planes and platforms: the jacaranda, the caiinicuil and the acacias form, with a light wood pergola, the first ceiling. Underneath, strong banana trees, guava trees with pink trunks and Pitosphorum helped by a light steel and wood structure protect the living room. Other two platforms, a water one and an earth one are placed, with geometrical precision, between perfumed lime trees and jasmine, honeysuckle and xanthosoma plants.
Finally, on a much lower level, blue ivy organizes tens of species that form the lowest garden level. The materials used: brick, concrete, wood and steel get to express themselves based on their own building logic, and always subordinate to one idea: the garden.