Solo House is one of twelve holiday houses commissioned from different architecture offices, and scattered across a vast secluded area in the hills of the Matarraña region, south of Barcelona.
It stands in the midst of a natural forest, its circular plan framing the edge of a plateau overlooking the landscape. The floor and the roof – two 4.5m wide ring concrete slabs with an inner diameter of 40 m – define the house as an enlarged perimeter.
The roof is supported by four steel frames of nine columns. Positioned as chords of the circle, they collectively describe a square. The four segments they define are the only enclosed areas of the house.
Three of the four are enclosed by glazing set within the steel frames and sliding arcs of curved polycarbonate panels covered with stretched aluminium mesh. All appliances are mounted directly on the columns. The fourth segment serves as a pool house, the floor of which retains the water of the sloping basin within the inner courtyard.
On the roof, an exposed collection of machines required to ensure the house’s selfsufficiency, disrupts its formal consistency.
