Houses
The house as landscape: nineteen metres of glass facing Lake Sanabria
We visit Casa del Lago with its architect, who tells us why he decided the lake should be the main wall of the living room.
“The first time I went up to the plot, I didn't look at the land: I looked at the lake,” says the architect from Estudio Herrán as he opens the oak sliding doors. “Everything else came later: the house had to be a line, and that line had to face the water.”
The result is a single piece of concrete set into the hillside, with a continuous nineteen-metre window. Inside, the exposed concrete of the ceilings and walls sits alongside the timber of the floors and the benches, and an inner stone garden separates the living area from the bedrooms.
The house was designed to use little: geothermal heating, external insulation and solar-control glazing. In winter, the low sun reaches the back of the living room; in summer, the overhang keeps it out.
Today the house is for sale exclusively with Planta Libre. “I'd like it to be bought by someone who will sit on that bench in the afternoon,” says the architect. “That's what it's for.”
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