Abstract

Alejandro de la Sota often explains his interest in the family house as circumstantial exercise: the opportunity to explore the boundaries of new materials and construc­tion systems. The experimental commitment to domestic exercises is the common ground of projects and works from different periods. The single family house is presented as an excellent instrument for this purpose: the “small” work minimizes the investment risk in a scenario of uncertainty and at the same time time, it’s a 1:1 scale prototype for the later development of bigger building (larger area and more floors), but with similar technical requests: resistance , watertightness, insulation, climate control, sunscreen, etc.. The article attempts to identify a number of inter­ferences and contradictions between the “heroic” speech by Alejandro de la Sota reference to “housing as test tube”, and constructed or projected reality, finding that, in most cases, will be housing solutions that integrate previously experienced in larger works.