Three Gardens House
AGi Architects
Principals
Nasser B. Abulhasan, Joaquín Pérez - Goicoechea
Design Project Leader
Stefania Rendinelli
Onsite Project Leaders
Sara Barranco
Project Team
Willy Ollero, Gwenola Kergall, Lulu Alawadhi, Ana López Cerrato, Alfredo Carrato, Cristina Ruiz Nolasco, Hanan Alkouh, Samer Mohammad, Babu Abraham,
Abdulhafiz Bahi El Din
Brief
It all started with a question: Are you able to design an outside space that can be used 365 days a year? For moderate climates such as the Spanish it seems quite simple, but in the case of an extreme weather like that of Kuwait it was necessary to think about new strategies. So we asked the client: Could you live in an outer space located at different levels? Could you classify your outdoor activities in evening and daytime actions, summer and winter events? These enquiries may be very difficult to answer for a Mediterranean family, but definitely not for those who are used to living in adverse weather conditions and who easily know what can -and cannot- be done during the summer outdoors. We decided to stratify the external uses according to the period of the year and the hours of the day in which these activities could be developed, and accordingly we designed three gardens. The first one is a Wet Garden on ground floor, which allows us to activate related spaces during the hottest periods. The pool and some fountains are located in this garden, which is surrounded by the main social spaces of the house. The Summer Garden stands in the coldest layer, 4 meters below street level. Protected by the soil’s thermal mass and the projected shadows of the housing volume, a large sheet of water is placed to catalyze the evapotranspiration that -through convection- rises and refreshes the air towards upper spaces. The third one lies on the roof, an ideal place for winter days and hot summer nights. A perforated skin covers the Winter Garden, avoiding direct solar radiation and raising the privacy of its inhabitants. These three gardens become unified as a single outer space and are connected -visually and physically- through exterior stairs; we begin to develop the rest of the home from the generation of the aforementioned voids, articulating the program of required uses around them.
Experience & Involvement
Assigned to the project towards the completion of the fit-out works, to assist with the snagging period and handing over for the client. The role tasked was to document and point-out any irregularities on site, not following the architectural details of the project. Further tasks included preparing presentation boards & documents, double-checking quantity orders for architectural elements on site. The project presented a working opportunity to understand and familiarize between project types in a real life setting.
