For the architecture office, delaVegaCanolasso, today’s architecture has forgotten the importance of privacy and succumbed to exhibitionism: great windows in thin walls looking nowhere and displaying everything.

“La Madriguera” (the burrow) intends to get the house back to its essence, claiming the importance of the introverted against the extroverted.

The Madrid-based architects understand the house as a lair, a hideout, a shelter. A reflection which distorts and expands the garden, while it confuses and protects.

 “I can not guess the inside, a bit closer, now i can peep through the great silver oculus drilling the reflection”

“But, What’s inside? a woman looks at herself in a mirror, in a garden, immersed in a pond. The opposite view, from the inside, is fully covered with vegetation, a pond full of water and flowers flooding the view through the oculus.”

A series of controlled openings allow effective lighting and ventilation while avoiding the direct views from the outside.

The rest of the spaces of the house (the kitchen-dining, the living and the studio) are located within a contiguous volume, a former painting workshop; its translucent roof drowns it with zenithal light all day long.

delavegacanolasso has worked with transparency in other projects such as the Pavilion in Juan Bravo in Madrid.

As a strategy, the custom made furniture is placed along the perimeter, ensuring maximum free space and avoiding circulation space.

The architects chose an easy-to-assemble constructive system, consisting of a galvanised steel substructure wrapped with OSB boards. The skin includes natural cork and recycled cotton as thermal insulation.

For the interior, they chose pine wood, wrapping it up warm and making it more welcoming.

The oculus, as well as all the window frames are fully made in brushed galvanised steel. On the roof, two skylights of this same material open to the sky, bathing the space with light.

Which reflects and blurs the incoming light