House on the Hill by HW Studio

_project: House on the Hill
_architecture: HW Studio Arquitectos
_location: Michoacán, Mexico

One of the principal roles of architecture is to trigger emotions, it influences how one feels spiritually and mentally. However, it’s not just emotions that architecture can affect. Humans are highly sensitive to their environmental conditions. Architecture is not just a physical environment in which we live. It also has a cultural aspect that represents people, and how we see ourselves as well as how we see the world around us.

The topic of mystery in architecture becomes highly relevant today, as contemporary architecture focuses in the visual sense. Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, wrote in 1989 that mystery is the quality of a space that cannot be completely understood from the original vantage point and that encourages the users to explore it to fulfil the missing information.

The House on the Hill designed by HW Studio in Mexico, is discreetly placed in the nature and composed by raw materials - concrete, wood, and steel. Consequently, the project preserves the rough and primitive atmosphere of the mountains where it is nestled, while offering an experience of true closeness to nature in which one would also adapt to it in a simple way. For the owners, the house is a refugee, a place to slow down and get away from routine, to enjoy the essence of life and nature with the children. The house has had a great impact on their lives; it has allowed them to disconnect from stress, routine, and technology and to connect with each other to simply enjoy the moment.

Although it’s not their permanent home, the owners claim that living there is a whole experience that starts from the road that takes you there. “Entering the forest is always exciting; you are enjoying watching the surroundings, and suddenly the house appears in a very subtle way. The desire to enter is always huge. Once inside, the house surprises you and forces you to have a moment to contemplate the landscape that continuously enhances and changes. What we enjoy most about the house is how stimulating it is to the senses: the smell of wood and forest, the silence, the perfect temperature, the textures of the materials and the nature that comes with it.”

To live here is simply an experience of contemplation.

_written by Daniela Moreira Silva
_film by Architecture Hunter & Mavix
_cover image by Cesar Bejar
_drawings by HW Studio:

1. Floor Plan
2. Section A-A'
3. Facade A-A
4. Facade B-B