Hill House

The project was about being aware and cognizant of cues and characteristics of nature - its views, its smell, its topography, behaviour of tropical rain, wind direction - and how to shape the house in such a way that it not only enjoys these elements, but also how the house becomes part of it. The positioning of the house was decided by walking the property to get a real feel and sense of the place. A hill was identified to be the best position for the home, as it provided security due to its elevation, views of the adjacent mountainscapes and the sea, and the feeling of seclusion that the owner desired. The house was then broken down into separate pavilions as the plateau on the hill was limited. The main living pavilion was placed there, while the master’s and guest pavilions were placed separately and submerged into the slope of the hill to react to the downward slopes and to achieve further privacy. The result is one where the presence of nature is undeniably constant. One has to go through meandering walkways flanked with lush landscaping to go from one pavilion to another, where one intimately experiences nature’s various elements (sunlight, wind, greeneries, and even the occasional drizzle). The house has an absence of hallways because its main circulatory space IS nature. Transparency is applied in majority of the enclosures so that even from the indoors, views of nature around the house are afforded. Unprocessed materials were brought into the interiors such as unstained wood and unpolished stone to showcase the beauty found in their natural state. The project also became an exercise of being cognizant of real-time occurrences, accepting the deviation from the original intent, and letting these occurrences take control of the design and construction process. During the excavation of the main pavilion, for instance, there were minor erosions that occurred. Instead of spending time and resources putting back the soil and building retaining walls, the guest rooms were built in the eroded parts under the main pavilion, which otherwise would have been separate structures. This saved a significant amount of time and resources while still achieving the same spatial quality for these rooms. There was also a need to react to the shortage of and the delayed shipping periods of the originally specified materials, due to the lockdowns caused by the pandemic. As fate had it, the client had a collection of finishing materials he had gathered over the past three decades to either sell or use in his own projects, all of which were stored in a nearby warehouse, which were eventually used for his own residence. Originally intended for outdoor applications, the materials would further enhance the conceptual intent for the home, as the outdoors are now literally brought in - with rough stone walk pads now lined up for the flooring, unstained and uneven wood being used for the ceiling and flooring, volcanic stone originally for hardscape elements now used for wall accents.