Project: Pomarino House
Architects: Sommet
Location: Porongo, Bolivia
Area: 5,134 sf
Photographs by: Leonardo Finotti
Pomarino House by Sommet
The Pomarino House is a spectacular contemporary dwelling located on a corner of two principal streets in a gated community in Porongo, Bolivia. This 5,134 square foot home takes on an L-shaped layout nestled between wonderfully landscaped spaces. It was designed by Sommet and it follows their design language you might recognize from their GG House project in Santa Cruz de la Sierra as well as the PP House project in the same town, Porongo.
The Pomarino house stands in a corner that meets the two principal streets that organize the gated community in which it is located. This “L” shaped house opens itself to its neighbors in order to take advantage of the views in every possible angle. Since privacy wasn´t an issue for the house´s owners, we decided to locate the swimming pool in the most visible corner, in order to expose the house´s design and open it to its surroundings.
The house takes advantage of the terrain´s natural slope and locates itself on top of the hill. This way it manages to hide the underground on the slope, making the garage and service areas invisible to the public.
The house is composed of two main volumes that sit on top of the hill and overlap on top of each other, responding to the lot´s neighbors. The space generated under the top volume creates a gallery that connects the house with the swimming pool and also functions as the house´s main access. This distribution hall connects the gallery with the kitchen, living room and service kitchen, which are all arranged under a free plan organization. An independent volume that sits behind the gallery hosts the service areas: laundry room, bathroom and sauna.
The top level hosts 4 bedrooms, and a family room. All bedrooms have access to a roof terrace and are able to enjoy the views of the surroundings. In this house we decided to use floor to ceiling glass windows in order to maximize the views and emphasize the connection to the exterior. In the living room, having both sides enclosed by glass walls allows people to have open views of the exterior and to have a natural flow between inside and outside.
