Magnolia House, Arrayanas Ecuador, South American Real Estate Project, Ecuadorian Architecture Images
Magnolia House in Arrayanas
24 Feb 2022
Architecture: Estudio Felipe Escudero
Location: Arrayanas, Ecuador, South America
Magnolia House
?Designing a house for a mother is not only an act of design but an act of love?.

Photos: Haley Lee & Saul Endara
Magnolia House, Ecuador
Modernism famous motto ?a house is a machine for living in? takes on different meanings as we move from the machine age into the digital one. What makes a house special is that you are designing a specific lifestyle for a specific person in a specific time and place.

So, when you are posed the question to design a house for your mother, the person who had you in her womb before you were born, it means a lot of additional history and emotion has to be incorporated in the space. This is an opportunity for the project to strive for more than simple efficiency and that provides the owner an emotional connection to family and her childhood.
?My mother always told me stories about a Magnolia tree she had in her house as a child, so her new house is organized around a courtyard that frames a Magnolia tree as the center of the residence. The concrete ceiling delicately turns into walls providing the feeling of being hugged and protected?. This element also allows for the house to feel transparent and at the same time provide privacy.

In addition to the simple, functional logic, the house design ...