Living the Gardens Villas by Sanzpont Arquitectura is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2022 A' Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design Competition Category.
IronArchitecture· 2022
Living the Gardens Villas
Client: Sanzpont Arquitectura
A' Design Award Winner in Architecture Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #140576The Design
About Living the Gardens Villas
Living the Gardens is a residential complex of nine villas in Cancun, Mexico, built on a site of 2,373 square meters. Each villa has three levels and covers 216 to 275 square meters. The ground floor holds a living room, dining room, kitchen, terrace, half bathroom and an interior garden. The upper floor holds a master bedroom and two secondary bedrooms. Each villa also has a roof garden. Local materials and passive bioclimatic design reduce energy use, while wooden louvers and native vegetation give solar protection.
The Recognition
About the A' Design Award
Living the Gardens Villas is an Iron A' Design Award winner, a prestigious recognition granted to good designs that meet the professional and industrial requirements expected from well-designed creations. Iron winners demonstrate great skill, high specialization, expert understanding, and creative capacity of their creators. Living the Gardens Villas is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished creation that is practical and innovative. This Iron A' Design Award-winning design integrates industry best practices and has competent technical characteristics linked with know-how and talent. Living the Gardens Villas is respected for its thoroughness and is designed to provide quality of life improvements that help make the world a better place.
Interviews
Design Interview
What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
The main principle of this project is to recover an abandoned construction with multi-family housing, with a design that respects and integrates with the environment generating holistic natural and familiar ambiences. The project also offers Wellness amenities such as a yoga deck, outdoor fitness area, picnic and vegetable garden, pool, art corridor, massage tepees, social relax tepees, playground and pet-friendly area.
What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
The main focus was to create dwellings with an innovative design, but with a local architectural sensation. An avant-garde architecture that feels endemic.
What are your future plans for this award winning design?
Our plan for this project is that the families that inhabit it can enjoy harmony. It is especially important for us that the users can see their family grow here and that all users, but especially children, create significant relationships within this compact community and create a strong social fabric these days when social disintegration is a big problem.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- Living The Gardens development is a complex of nine villas in condominium regime, on a land of 2,373 square meters located in Cancun, Mexico.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The 9 villas are buildings of 3 levels with a total of 216 to 275 square meters each. The ground floor includes a living room, dining room, kitchen, terrace, half bathroom, and an interior garden. The first floor includes a master bedroom with a bathroom, dressing room and a balcony, and two secondary bedrooms with a shared bathroom. Each villa has a roof garden. Finally, the amenities include a pool, garden, picnic area, outdoor gym, yoga area, sun deck and pets area.
- Tags
- housing, villas, sustainability, cross-ventilation, concrete structure
- Production Technology
- The project is entirely built with local materials because, more than an economic benefit, it reduces the environmental impacts of transporting materials long distances and supports the local economy.
- Design Challenge
- The structural challenge was to avoid structural support elements on the ground floor. The structure was solved in a way that the rooftop carries the intermediate slab with columns that, work in tension instead of compression, just like the tensioners in a steel structure. In other words, the ground floor roof is hanging from the rooftop. Imitating a steel structure, the slabs function as the lower and upper chord, the lateral columns function as tensioners and the block walls work as diagonals
- Research
- The first step to obtain a sustainable housing product is to make a climate analysis and to search and apply the best bioclimatic and sustainable strategies for the project. In the region, the climate is warm and humid, and due to these characteristics, the project implements solar protection, natural cross-ventilation and use of native vegetation. The application of these and other strategies make a sustainable and low energy consumption housing product.
- Inspiration
- The project aims to promote the reduction of the use of resources, economic savings and a more sustainable housing product through passive and bioclimatic design.
- Project Duration
- The project started in 2021 in Cancun, Mexico and is planned to be finished in 2023.
- Operation Flow
- Solar protection is a requirement to obtain a more energy effective dwelling in most climates, but in a hot climate like the one where Living The Gardens is built, it is essential. The project is protected from solar incidence with native vegetation, the volumetry of the building itself and wooden louvers located in the south facade, where the solar incidence is more intense.
- Patents
- Copyrights belong to sanzpont [arquitectura], 2021.
- Team Members
- Victor Sanz Pont
Sergio Sanz Pont
Álvaro Licona
Ana Cristina Avilés
José Rodríguez
Erik Pacheco
Bernardo Ortiz - Image Credits
- Image #1: sanzpont [arquitectura], Living The Gardens, 2021
Image #2: sanzpont [arquitectura], Living The Gardens, 2021
Image #3: sanzpont [arquitectura], Living The Gardens, 2021
Image #4: sanzpont [arquitectura], Living The Gardens, 2021
Image #5: sanzpont [arquitectura], Living The Gardens, 2021
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