Ensamble Studio. Truffle
Truffle project by ENSAMBLE STUDIO
Location: Spain – Laxe. Year: 2006- 2010. Status: Built
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La Trufa (The Truffle) is the brilliant result of an unusual design exercise involving straw bales, in-situ concrete and a cow called Paulina. Intended as a weekend retreat, the rock-like structure is perched on the Costa da Morte in north-west Spain.
Here’s the full story from the architect ANTÓN GARCÍA-ABRIL of ENSAMBLE STUDIO:
The Truffle is a piece of nature built with earth, full of air. A space within a stone that sits on the ground and blends with the territory. It camouflages, by emulating the processes of mineral formation in its structure, and integrates with the natural environment, complying with its laws.
To build it, we made a hole in the ground, piling up on its perimeter the topsoil removed, and we obtained a retaining dike without mechanical consistency. Then, we materialized the air building a volume with hay bales and flooded the space between the earth and the built air to solidify it. The poured mass concrete wrapped the air and protected itself with the ground. Time passed and we removed the earth discovering an amorphous mass.
The earth and the concrete exchanged their properties. The land provided the concrete with its texture and color, its form and its essence, and concrete gave the earth its strength and internal structure. But what we had created was not yet architecture, we had fabricated a stone.
We made a few cuts using quarry machinery to explore its core and discovered its mass inside built with hay, now compressed by the hydrostatic pressure exerted by concrete on the flimsy vegetable structure. To empty the interior, the calf Paulina arrived, and enjoyed the 50m3 of the nicest food, from which she nourished for a year until she left her habitat, already as an adult and weighing 300 kilos. She had eaten the interior volume, and space appeared for the first time, restoring the architectural condition of the truffle after having been a shelter for the animal and the vegetable mass for a long time.
“La trufa / The truffle” has been featured widely. However, today, I stumbled upon the video documentation showing the construction process of the project and I’ve been blown away. Additionally I suggest you to watch ANTÓN GARCÍA-ABRIL interviewed by HANS ULRICH OBRIST at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010.
trop fort !!!
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