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Greenhouse Home
Location
Colombia
Date
2017
Role
Lead Architect
M2
60
Material
Glass - Timber
MEMORY
Rural housing today is almost absent as an architectural solution. Beyond a few academic or private initiatives, the homes built in rural territories lack dignity. Families live on vulnerable land, in overcrowded structures with no thermal protection, unstable electricity, and improvised sanitation. As a result, “rurality” has become synonymous with poverty and limited opportunity, driving a massive rural–urban exodus and the abandonment of essential agricultural and forestry activities.
Nearly 75% of Bogotá’s territory is rural, bordering the Sumapaz moorland. Of its 166,000 rural hectares, only 35,000 are suitable for agriculture; the rest are protected lands where farming is restricted.
CONCEPTUAL STRATEGY
This reality opens a crucial opportunity to rethink rural housing through the idea of the resilient habitat: homes that adapt to adversity, produce their own food, heat their interior, grow with their inhabitants, respect vernacular traditions, and remain rooted in community life.
Our conceptual strategy unites energy generation and habitable structure in one element: the Thermal Roof (Termo Techo).
PROJECT STRATEGY
A greenhouse is more than a transparent enclosure. It is a protected patio during rainy seasons, a place to grow food, a communal meeting space, and a passive thermal device that warms the home safely and efficiently.
Likewise, a roof is more than a cover. It is a spatial platform that shelters life, a fundamental symbol of dignity, and a cultural form deeply rooted in ancestral structures like the Maloca, Ruca, and Choza. The roof is the project’s architectural and cultural core.
We propose a house that is essentially a thermal roof, integrating productive life and daily domestic life under a single habitable structure. Two inclined planes support one another to form a traction triangle, creating a protected interior. A steel system of triangular frames defines the House–Greenhouse and stabilizes the roof.
By responding to thermal, adaptable, communal, productive, and resilient principles, this proposal aims to address not only the quantitative deficit of rural housing in Bogotá but, above all, its qualitative one.
