Casa Magnolia, un paraíso natural de Felipe Escudero

Projects

A project by renowned Ecuadorian architect Felipe Escudero

Felipe Escudero was commissioned by his mother to build her new home An extremely daunting task when there are so many emotional implications involved. Nevertheless, Felipe found inspiration in a story his mother told him: a magnolia tree in the family home she grew up in.

With this memory in mind Escudero designed a contemporary home surrounded by nature and perched on the top of a mountain valley in the Arrayanas district in Puembo, Ecuador.

A single-storey minimalist home built around a central courtyard that frames a large magnolia tree that recalls his mother’s childhood.

As Felipe Escudero says, “designing a house for a mother is not only an act of design but an act of love”.

The entire layout has been arranged around a magnolia tree

“The home has been designed around this tree, the element that articulates, contains and orders the entire layout, including both the social and private areas.

A courtyard forms the central core, drawing the eye through a key structural and built element: a large concrete slab that not only serves as the roof of the home, but also creates a subtle connection with the ground thanks to two continuous supports that emerge in an organic and homogeneous manner.

Furthermore, this element also lends a sense of transparency to the home whilst at the same time ensuring privacy.”

The concrete slab that covers the entire house is broken only by the magnolia tree, whose top rises up into the air above the central courtyard.

The concrete roof is submerged, creating sloping walls that are partially buried in the courtyard and that can be accessed via large floor-to-ceiling doors and glass walls.

The pool featuring ONIX mosaic tiles frames the entire main façade of the home

Magnolia House also features a large swimming pool that runs the length of the large terrace, framing the entire main façade of the home.

The terrace, which overlooks the lush tropical garden,is bordered by the infinity pool lined with ONIX´s Penta Bali Stone Matte glass mosaic tiles that blend in perfectly, as if they were a part of nature.

The large rectangular-shaped pool features ONIX mosaic tiles reminiscent of turquoise Bali stone with an exotic natural-effect design.

The pool is visible throughout the front part of the home and creates a continuous connection with the interior.

The green tones of the pool blend in with the natural setting forming a striking contrast with the large white concrete slab that covers and clads the entire home.

EFE Estudio Felipe Escudero, an ideas incubator

Felipe Escudero set up his own studio in 2012 after working in other architecture studios such as Heatherwick Studio (UK) and Mad Architects (Beijing). EFE is an architecture, construction and real estate project studio that uses design as a tool to contribute added value to human experience and urban landscapes.

The studio is conceived as an incubator for ideas that is constantly innovating and incorporating new concepts in order to develop projects with a profoundly sensitive and human approach, focused on ingenious designs that project optimism and vitality.