Landscape House sans Landscape

Ok, maybe this is a conceptual gap or just landscape architectural griping (similar to the use of the term 'architectural plantings', or 'value engineering' perhaps) but there's nothing remotely 'landscape' about the Landscape House for an Ecologist, seen via Inhabitat. Designed by Raphaelle and Alfredo Maul, of Maul Dwellings in San Sebastian, Spain, the project is: "...a site-sensitive, passive solar dwelling designed to fuse environmental performance with aesthetic integrity, building science with architectural excellence." Not to say the project isn't cool and saavy in including such elements as rainwater harvesting and water conservation, passive solar, pv panels, and design for disassembly - it makes site reference to landscape. Perhaps site and technology house would be more apropos...?


:: image via Inhabitat

A winner of a 2006 AIA Committee on Design competition, the Landscape House offered some compelling ideas for the jury: "Things seem to be in balance with this particular scheme. It represents what a house for an ecologist needed to be—it wasn’t privileging one system over another but used a number of systems—photovoltaic, etc.—beyond the disassembly. I think it took the premise of the program: house for an ecologist, a single person, and said all of those givens were OK to work with." Um, still no landscape...




:: images via Inhabitat

Well a bit of landscaping - I guess the closest we get is the verdant, yet meaningless backdrop of greenery... oh well. I'd guess an ecologist would like a little be more in terms of integrated nature into the architecture, but perhaps not part of the brief. I'd still live here... :)


:: images via Inhabitat