Residential
Villa BJ
A light-filled home built into the hillside and fed by nature
Building with and within nature means minimising the impact of any building work carried out, and there’s no better example than Villa BJ – an underground house built into a hillside. Placing a building anywhere alters its surrounding environment, something the CORE team considers carefully with every project, assessing each landscape’s interactions and influences on the new personal spaces created.
However, as well as minimising this extension’s impact on the land, building it into the hill provides several other advantages. Thorough insulation means temperatures are easily maintained overnight, with carefully calculated overhangs protecting the interiors from overheating in the summer and providing solar gains in winter. Locally sourced building materials such as concrete, glass and natural stone also reduce the house’s carbon footprint while further increasing its efficiency, meaning that barely any additional heating or cooling is required. The icing on the cake? A large window extends along the entire south facade of the house, providing natural light throughout, in addition to the surprising interior courtyard, which brings nature into the very structure of the house
Before & After
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