Bolivian phoenix: A Bolivian house makes use of parts of redundant industrial buildings to generate an ecologically appropriate architecture that respects both topography and climate.

The scheme for a voluminous airy house and studio in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia was designed by Luis and Alvaro Fernandez de Cordova Landivar. By skilfully combining salvaged industrial parts with new structures and treasuring existing vegetation, they have created a dwelling that responds to the landscape and the hot rainy climate of the region.

Christened EI Galpon, (which means The Shed), the scheme consists of two independent structures sheltering beneath the spreading canopy of an old metal shed, made in Belgium and rescued from an industrial site. Siting the assembly was determined by the position of an existing group of ancient and beautiful trees which architects and client were determined not to disturb.

The main axis of the assembly, running north-east/south-west, is traced by the line of a long thin swimming pool running down the middle between house and studios. It was created out of an old concrete water tank, salvaged with the shed, On the north-west side of it is a two-storeyed structure containing the house; on the south-east are a big double-height workshop and a studio linked by a bridge at the upper level.

To allow the to circulate and create an insulating cushion, structures were made separate from the canopy. Axial cuts in the skin of the metal umbrella reveal its skeleton - which casts shadows across white walls - and they open up the pool and central patio to the sky.

The architectural language is one of slender structural elements - columns, trusses, linking bridges, balustrading - of voids partly enclosed by reflective white planes that seem, by turn, solid or insubstantial depending on the size of openings. Planes are perforated by a thin window strip (turning the outside corner of the kitchen), cut away by double-height stretches of glass panels and pierced by a linking bridge or projecting balcony. The main living and dining room is a lofty volume filled with diffused luminance from a transparent wall that rising the full double height turns the corner at the top and becomes part of the roof.

Two massive pieces of mahogany, 4m long and I m high, have been made into tables in the studio and dining room. Placed under the gallery linking upper bedrooms, the dining table underscores the horizontal dimensions of the space.