3 Houses in Payandé Hill / Arquitectura en Estudio

Architects: Arquitectura en Estudio
Location: Villeta, Cundinamarca, Colombia
Architect In Charge: Arquitectura en Estudio, Natalia Heredia
Area: 650 sqm
Photographs: David Uribe

From the architect. 100km north of Bogotá lies the small town of Villeta, where this country house has been built. The ever-present warm weather, the dramatic landscapes and the greenery of the mountains have completely driven the design of the house, which intends to blur the boundaries between the exterior and the interior while framing the most beautiful views.

You access the house via an open courtyard/garden through which you can see, at a glance, the whole span of the social areas of the house while being immediately drawn into the exuberance of the vegetation of the region. The interior living, dining and kitchen areas widely open towards the exterior swimming pool and deck areas, forming a very horizontal, open plan social space that spills into the landscape.

The more private area, which contains the 4 bedrooms, has been laid out in an adjacent wing to be accessed through an open garden/corridor.  While all the bathrooms benefit from natural light and their own private garden, the bedrooms look out onto the mountains from their privileged stance and can be completely open towards the landscape.

The house makes the most out of a very simple constructive language: round metal columns, clean horizontal concrete slabs and a carefully knit timber screen, which can completely open or close at will. Most of the furniture is made up by white painted masonry, simplifying the maintenance process.

The mountains, the greenery and the water are present everywhere, and air is permanently flowing freely from the outside to the inside and from the inside to the outside, although here we can’t really know which is which.