360 House in Madrid, Spain

June 15, 2010 Category: Housing, Residential

Designed by Subarquitectura, 360 House is located in Madrid, Spain. With this dramatic cylindrical housing project, architecture firm Subarquitectura attempted to design a house with a public programme of social relations associated with the private lives of a family, on a sloping plot of land with privileged views of the surrounding mountainous landscape. Their aim was not to think in terms of domestic space, but to take a point of reference from engineering, motorway intersections and changes in direction. Subarquitectura attempted to construct the building itself from a poetic, rather than a pragmatic point of view.

The result is an extreme shape – a widely curving building generating the greatest quantity of linear metres towards the best vantage points on the plot. In the centre of the 360° functional form, there resides a midpoint, isolated and completely dark, which Subarquitectura view as a space of 100% technology and 0% landscape – a ‘mediatheque’. Within the single gesture of the loop, two ways of moving are generated: going down and looking outwards. After a descent by ramp, the long house gives way to panoramic views of the surrounding mountains. The building is black outside, composed of slate, (a material specific to the location) and imposed as an aesthetic specification of the area. White inside, the reflective, neutral décor is designed to be as luminous as possible in contrast to the darker exterior.

360 House Architechture Plan 1