The self-sufficient house Harvest Home has been given an award in the ‘2nd Advanced Architecture Contest’, an international competition organized by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia.
The house has been designed for use in the Cauca valley, Colombia, which lies between the Occidental and Central mountain chains. The main construction material is bamboo, which grows naturally and in abundance in the area, and is ideal for the purpose.
Whilst Harvest Home is an experimental house, it is based on a traditional layout. It has a central fireplace, with a lower floor for daytime use, an upper floor for the night. Its slender structure rises above the valley’s vegetation but, because of its organic nature, blends in perfectly with it. The bamboo shell, interwoven with wicker mesh, creates a hard-wearing structure.
The competition jury singled out “the hybridization of a light two-storey construction system, the functional layout around the chimney, and the adherence to principles of traditional architecture.”
