Las Ramblas are, for most, synonymous with strolling in the cities. However, originally they traced rainwater channels that crossed them from the mountain to the sea. The intensive urbanization of the towns, however, led to the boulevards losing their natural function within the ecosystem.
It is precisely there that the Casa Rambla-Clima project focuses, in Molina de Segura, Murcia, by the architects Andrés Jaque, founder of the Office For Political Innovation (Offpolinn) firm and Miguel Mesa del Castillo. It is a manifesto house that seeks to warn about the damage caused by climate change due to the excessive urbanization of cities and their surroundings. It has been conceived as a system for the recovery of the ecosystem of the boulevards, seriously damaged, and aims to raise awareness among residents and promote reconnection with urban planning from a sustainable vision.
“La Casa Rambla-Clima works as a climatic and ecological device that is part of a series of associative initiatives, developed at the scale of independent citizens, to contribute to the repair of the environmental and climatic damage caused by the over-urbanization of Molina de Segura ”, explain the authors of the project.
The house, built as the first residence for a couple with two children, maintains a close link with a nucleus of vegetation that grows surrounded by the construction itself. The owners, great lovers of nature, shared with the architects their concern for the protection of ecosystems from the beginning.
In order to regenerate the climatic regime of this stretch of boulevard that had survived the urbanization of the area, the collection of rainwater, from a sloping roof, and the recovery of gray water from showers and sinks, has been essential. Through a system of humidity and conductivity sensors “an automated meteorology is activated that is beyond the control of humans and its purpose is to provide the necessary conditions for the biological repair of the boulevard”, the architects point out.
After a year in operation, mastic laurels, baladre myrtles, Myrica favas, vincas and palmetios grow in the new orchard. And a fauna of insects, reptiles and small mammals have found refuge there. In fact, it is a house with a green heart where most of the rooms converge. An irregular elliptical ring of continuous spaces and variable width, where the hall, living room, dining room, kitchen and study openly face the garden. Even the picture gallery faces the greenery. Floor-to-ceiling glazing towards that central green space emphasizes the connection. Inside the house, the walls and roof have been infected with that greenery, with a palette that transmits biophilic energy.
It is a building that could almost be said to guard the most precious asset: a nature that grows independently. The domestic spaces are elevated with respect to this oasis, which once again functions as a boulevard in its original meaning, channeling water and transmitting life wherever it passes. In this turning inward, the house also expresses a certain disagreement with the environment where the environmental eco-systemic balance has been broken.
The trajectory of the architects Andrés Jaque, currently Dean of the Columbia University of Architecture, in New York, and Miguel Mesa del Castillo, PhD from the University of Alicante, stands out for their continuous investigation of architectural practice and its social, political and ecological. With a search for improvement of the environment and ecosystems, which address from the detail to the global. Thus, in the house they also try some unorthodox ways of increasing energy efficiency, in terms of heat. Like the design of a marble bench that adheres to the ellipsis in contact with the vegetation and proposes to the inhabitants of the house to cool off by “gluing their skin to the marble”. Or the coil exposed to the sun that crowns the elliptical construction and provides hot water throughout the year.
To bring this project to a successful conclusion, the architects Andrés Jaque/Offpolinn and Miguel Mesa del Castillo have had the collaboration of the soil scientist María Martínez Mena and the ecologists Paz Parrondo Celdrán and Rubén Vives, committed to contributing to the citizen mobilization that demands the reparation climate of Murcia. This unique home has just been awarded the Living Places-Simon Architecture Price 2022 international award, in the Personal Places category.
