SOLARIS

Project :  Solaris

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Lead Architect : José Ángel Ruiz Cáceres

 

Landscape Team : ESCULPIR EL AIRE

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Location:  La Nucía. Alicante. Spain

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Photography : José Ángel Ruiz Cáceres

SOLARIS

The name Solaris comes from Latin and means ‘of the sun’ and, consequently, of time.

SOLARIS is a contemporary manifesto on inhabiting Light and Time, not just Space.

 

Architecture of Time

Solaris offers an architectural experience where interior and exterior dissolve naturally. It is not an architecture that imposes itself on the landscape, but rather activates it with precision and restraint. Conceived from the sun, it replaces the notion of housing as a static object with that of housing as a “temporal system of experiencing time”, questioning the accelerated contemporary lifestyle and proposing a slow and absolutely conscious architecture, capable of synchronising with natural cycles. Solaris is a contemporary refuge where silence, matter and light allow time — our experience of time — to be the true protagonist.

 

Chronobiological Architecture

Designed to capture every variation of the Mediterranean day, Solaris is organised based on a precise reading of the location and the daily and seasonal solar cycles. Each room responds to a moment of the day: dawn activates the spaces for beginning and contemplation; midday concentrates the communal life of its inhabitants; the afternoon lengthens the shadows and encourages intimacy.

Light is not an added resource, but the structuring principle of the project. It defines the routes, hierarchises the spaces and establishes an intimate relationship between interior and exterior. Like an inhabited silence, Solaris does not compete with its surroundings: it retreats serenely to integrate landscape, climate and light into a continuous experience.

 

Bioclimatic Design

Solaris is a precise, sustainable and timeless piece of architecture where energy becomes form and light becomes structure. Its design optimises the relationship between the building and the local climate through the use of natural resources —sun, wind and vegetation— to achieve maximum thermal and environmental comfort with minimum energy consumption. Its rigorous and serene geometry is articulated around a central courtyard that regulates ventilation and solar radiation. A large south-facing glass concavity promotes heat gain in winter and is protected in summer by passive solar control, encouraging natural ventilation and evaporative cooling through the layout of the swimming pool and vegetation at the front.