בית בהרי ירושלים

The house sits alongside a nature reserve in the steep topography of the Jerusalem Mountains. Out of a desire to respect nature and from the understanding that it is not possible nor desirable to compete with it, the question arose as to how one begins to touch such an area. How do you touch and not touch?
The design proposed to minimally touch the topography, to reveal the aesthetics of cutting the mountain rock in the places we needed and showing the aesthetic of concrete "scars".
Due to the requirements of the program, we produced different possibilities of connecting between spaces at the same time as creating separations between the functions. The skeleton of the building is built from 2 concrete volumes of different sizes that sit on top of each other, staggered, whilst creating a three-dimensional patio space between them. Where on one level are the bedrooms of the family's children with a family room and on another level are the public areas of the house by the pool, the work rooms and the parents' master bedroom.
The central entrance for the family brings you into a narrow space where one feels the scale of the person in relation to the environment and allows you to touch the exposed stone and concrete walls surrounding the patio that connects the two masses.
The passage to the side of the patio creates contact with nature on the lower level and further on with the sky.
The skeleton of the building is built on natural topography and combines local stone and exposed concrete beams. The beams rest on the existing topography and allow nature to climb and penetrate, and over time to creep in, wrap and take over parts of the house.