Altos de Santa Rosa sits in a 10 acre plot of land composed of an old farm house and its adjacent gardens. More importantly, the site sits in an intermediate plateau 500 meters below the city of Quito and 300 meters above the thalweg of the Tumbaco Valley, creating a unique geography that can capitalize on fragmented views of the city to the east and an unbound landscape to the west.

The strategy for the project is driven by two primary desires: one, exploiting the existing views and two, developing an effective system to organize infrastructure in order to minimize the presence of service spaces within the grounds of the project. These two desires are resolved through the development of an infrastructural spine that informs both the plan and the section of the project. In section, the spine capitalizes on the sites topography to be able introduce half sunken garages which on the one hand eliminate vehicular presence from the street and on the other allow for a raised ground which creates a more well defined frame for the city view. In plan the garages create an infrastructural zipper that allows for two houses to share a driveway significantly reducing the amount of roadway in the project.

Each individual unit is perceived as a single piece, yet responds to an infrastructural and assembly logic based on linkage, repetition and aggregation. Each individual unit is perceived as a single piece, yet responds to an infrastructural and assembly logic based on linkage, repetition and aggregation. From the ground plane, each unit is perceived as bounded by grass in the private side and gravel in the public side.

The interior of the units are primarily a free plan around a service core allowing for a large open space that opens to the garden in the social areas and multiple bedroom configurations in the domestic quarters above.

Este proyecto residencial se desarrolla en una propiedad de aproximadamente tres hectáreas, ocupando parte de los grandes jardines de una antigua casa de hacienda. Geográficamente, el proyecto esta anclado en una planicie intermedia a 500 metros por debajo de la ciudad de Quito, creando una gran relación de vistas con fragmentos de la ciudad hacia el este y un gran territorio abierto hacia el oeste. La estrategia del proyecto examina dos lógicas territoriales: la primera es la de explotar el gran potencial de las diversas vistas creadas por la topografía, y la segunda, el desarrollar un sistema constructivo eficiente que elimina grandes espacios de infraestructura y servicio en el proyecto permitiendo destacar el valor de los jardines existentes. Estas dos ideas se resuelven organizando las viviendas en una espina dorsal que dictamina la planta y el corte del proyecto. Este sistema introduce una serie de garajes semi-cubiertos que eliminan la presencia de los vehículos en el proyecto, y permite que la planta baja de las unidades se desplace verticalmente, dando un mejor marco visual desde el interior de las viviendas. Cada casa es vista como unifamiliar, pero en realidad esta responde a una lógica de ensamblaje en serie.