自建住宅丨厄瓜多尔丨Cordada Arquitectura

Architects:Cordada Arquitectura

Area:230m²

Year:2025

Category:Houses

A Lead Architects:Karla Briceño, José Luis Aguilera, Sebastián Zapata

Drawings:Mathias Terán, Sebastián Zapata

Structural Calcutation:Patricio Cevallos

Building Team:Ángel Caiza

Carpentry:Alfredo Acosta

Plumbing And Sanitary Installations:Darío

Electrical Installations:Hans Schneider

City:Quito

Country:Ecuador

Text description provided by the architects. Arupo rises serenely before the Ilaló volcano, in the Cornejo neighborhood of Conocoto. It is the home of a couple who embrace retirement not as an ending but as a threshold into a different time: slower in work, yet more intense in love for their children and grandchildren. An intimate refuge, yet open—ready to welcome family, friends, and the flow of life itself.

The memory of an accident gave them the certainty that living should mean freedom from barriers. The house embraces the slope with ramps linking three levels in a continuous journey, almost as if all were a single plane. Movement becomes fluid, accessible, uninterrupted.

Its nearly square plan unfolds around an arupo tree embraced by a fountain in the central patio. Here, time becomes visible: the pink blossoms announce the seasons, drought and rain leave their traces on the walls, dawns and sunsets framed by the patio remind the inhabitants that each day is unique. This green and liquid heart brings together the social and the intimate, while gently opening to Ilaló and its gardens.

The construction rests on three principles: comfort, proximity, and intimacy. Load-bearing walls of handmade brick, produced on the slopes of the very volcano that dominates the view, reveal in their irregularity the imprint of human labor. Above them, a wooden roof multiplies the warmth of light, creating spaces woven with shadows—refuges inhabited by time.

Arupo is more than a dwelling: it is memory and renewal. A place where maturity is embraced with gratitude, and where each corner recalls that life, even in its pause, continues to bloom.

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