Redefining the concept of farmhouse: Homestead designs in Madrid that blend with nature.

"My wish is to always live like this, living quietly in the corner of nature." — Claude Monet

The lush of the farms is something that attracts everyone's attention. Especially the urban dwellers, who live in a concrete jungle and are seldom exposed to the natural realm. And oftentimes these spaces are preferred to live in and attracted towards. 

The lush and abundant natural availability creates a kind of environment that makes it attractive to the people who wish to cherish living in spaces that extend beyond the cities and roads. 

And often in such environments, one wishes to stay and live a little longer. This can only be possible through resorts, hotels, and other stay places that help them experience both worlds. 

Although there are rare places where one can have a luxurious stay as well as experience nature at its best and at our doorsteps.

To be able to live inside nature for a longer period of time is something we all often wish for. 

How can we find ways to accomplish this without having to limit our vacations to just holidays or longing for one more vacation every year? 

Can this be made possible by creating a space that expands itself into nature by giving us a wholesome experience? 

Will a space that offers us a kind of comfort of the house and also the variety and experience of the farm work? To enjoy moments of peace can a homestead; a farmhouse give us that valuable and long-lasting experience? 

A Farmhouse expands its horizons beyond typical households and connects the building with the context closely. Not just through the built environment but also through the integration of the flora and fauna of the context. It offers us numerous activities including farming, animal rearing which help one live a sustainable lifestyle. 

To be able to live inside nature for a longer period of time is something we all often wish for. 

"Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower."

We need to be able to live in nature rather than just being a part of it. This requires a kind of design that is integrating itself into nature rather than including nature into it. And this can be made possible by creating a kind of homestead that bends all the boundaries between the context and the design and becomes an integral part of it. 

Brief: Aim of this challenge is to design a homestead that redefines the concepts of farmhouses by eliminating the barriers between the interior and the exterior through its design. 

Thus creating a farmhouse that provides a refuge to the people along with an experience of farming, animal raising, and sustainable living at the same place. This design challenge is aimed to bring the natural context and the design together in harmony by creating a structure that is not just built on the site but is very much an inherent part of it. 

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Some of the Best competition projects are as follows:

Winning Project: multitopia

By: Pola Kopras

^{Fig: 1 Section and Floor Plan}

Description: the utopian nature of agroecosystems. Together with the rest of the biocenosis, we create an ecosystem, its individual areas - biotopes - unites into a dynamic system, a system connected by a network of various independencies. A biotope is always considered in the context of the background of the biocenosis that lives in it. An attempt at the symbiosis of all the elements of the ecosystem is utopian.

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People’s Choice: SYMBIO-FARM

By: Emrah Okten, Furkan Karakuş & Onur Gultekin

^{Fig: 2 Section plan, Interior and Exterior view}

Description: A modern farmhouse where farming can be carried on in a symbiotic way with the privacy of a comfortable home. While making the design decisions, it was desired to create a project in which the farmhouse and the auxiliary spaces of the farm, and the natural environment are transitioned with another auxiliary open space, where everything is a whole, working together and feeding each other…

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Editor’s Choice: Lifted Ground: Between the Sublime and Domestic

By: Stephanie Tang & Jack Wathieu

^{Fig: 3 Interior View and Site Image}

Description: At the homestead, the realms of nature, production, and domestic meet under one roof. The boundaries are blurred between a wild “sublime” nature, worked agricultural land, and the domestic sheltered interior. The passage of time is registered in the architecture's embrace of the earth’s inherent tendency toward a wild nature.

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