Casa Sigüenza

Casa Sigüenza is a single-family house in San Cristóbal, Azuay, near Cuenca, Ecuador, designed by Mediagua Architecture to work with a sloping site rather than against it. Instead of flattening the land, the project organizes the program across a series of platforms, so the parking and the living areas sit on two terraces shaped by the existing slopes with the least possible intervention. This terraced strategy is a long-standing response to hillside building, and it lets the house settle into the topography while keeping earthworks and disruption to a minimum.

The landscape is structured into three distinct green zones, each with its own role. The first is a band of ornamental flora at the entrance, planted mainly with low vegetation and the kikuyu grass typical of the area, which softens the arrival sequence and dissipates the impact of vehicles before the house comes into view behind it. Closer to the building is the family garden, a more private outdoor room that links the residential interior to outdoor living through a transparent door connecting the kitchen to the barbecue. At the highest point of the terrain, marking the very limit of the property, a dense forest area forms a green edge against the mountain.

Light, threshold and privacy

The approach to the house is handled through porches and hallways that produce shifting effects of light and shadow, framed by a simple and inexpensive wood pergola over the outdoor barbecue. Working with thresholds in this way is a familiar concern in residential architecture, where the transition between arrival, outdoor space and interior shapes how a home is experienced. In the social area, floor-to-ceiling windows open the house to the surrounding views, increasing the permeability of the space and giving the interior a greater sense of breadth.

Privacy is calibrated differently across the plan. As one moves toward the bedrooms, the balance shifts so that solid wall outweighs opening and the windows shrink in surface area, a measured handling of daylighting and enclosure that suits a rest area. The roof slopes toward the back of the house, lifting the interior ceiling where the large windows are and lending the social space a wider feel, while also varying the intensity of light and solar heat gain across the rooms. Set in the hills around Cuenca, Casa Sigüenza reads as a quiet exercise in letting site, planting and section do the work of a comfortable home.