The construction of the Earth House is possible thanks to a mother and daughter’s wish to build a rural home where they would settle in at some point in the near future.

© Alfonso Arango

Architect: Arango Arquitecto

Location: Villa de Leyva, Boyaca, Colombia

Area: 185 sqm

Project Year: 2016

Photographs: Alfonso Arango

Structural Engineering: Ingeniería y Proyectos de Infraestructura

Construction Management: Hugo Alejandro Sabogal

© Alfonso Arango

From the architect. The construction of the Earth House is possible thanks to a mother and daughter’s wish to build a rural home where they would settle in at some point in the near future.The house is located in Villa de Leyva, a historical municipality considered a national monument due to its colonial architecture and the considerable historic burden among the land. There, the new architectural projects are jealously supervised by a strict building policy that seeks to preserve those colonial times, or at least their aesthetics. Even though architectural homogeneity in the municipality has been achieved through this policy, the logics and construction techniques have been overshadowed by an external purpose; it is normal to find metallic structure constructions that will soon be covered by a cladding layer in order to pres...