Summer House in San Bernardino

Personal contributions to the Project

Design - 50%

Plans - 50%

Sections - 50%

Ambient details - 50%

Construction details - 50%

Construction Direction - 30%

Renders - 100%

Photography - 100%

This house in a summer vacation city was my first job as an independent architect in collaboration with a colleague.

The commission was to design and construct a vacation home for a family with five children of ages 1 to 20.

For this reason, in addition to social spaces being the axis of a vacation home, we emphasized the creation of multiple spaces for hosting guests, from a living room that can be extended to the open plan when needed, to a green-shaded intermediary space, to a terrace lake and sunset view in the distance.

The local climate in summertime made the creation of shaded spaces and crossed ventilation a non-negotiable priority for the design, as well as the preservation of all of the trees.

The bedrooms are divided in two blocks: The first, located in the first floor accommodates the parents and the younger children on the front of the house,

The second block, located on ground level at the back of the house, takes the form of a open plan with enough space for the two older sons to invite friends over, while keeping a little distance to avoid disturbing other people sleeping.

On the upper floor, brick filters were used for a number of reasons:

- To defend the spaces from the heat of the sun

- To maintain visual permeability to the exterior.

- To generate warm spaces and facades with ever-changing patterns

- Use of inexpensive, locally produced materials

EXTERNAL METALIC STAIRSDETAIL OF ELEMENTS

EXTERNAL METALIC STAIRSELEVATION

Seeing the project from the first lines, through the whole building process until the end, helped me learn a lot about the importance of a multidisciplinary approach with technicians throughout the process to avoid mistakes and be the most efficient as possible on the construction.