Poetry and landscape: El Portal Invisible

With “El Portal Invisible”, Ecuador-based architecture firm Natura Futura Arquitectura has declared its love for the natural landscape, by building an invitation to sit back and indulge your senses in a contemplation of the western slopes of the Andes.



When it comes to building in the middle of nature, particularly in places with distinguished features, you need to be really in tune with the context. The location of Natura Futura Arquitectura's most recent work, eloquently named “Nubes Encantandas” in the province of Bolivar, Ecuador, on the slopes of the Andes is a case in point.



This young Ecuador-based architecture firm has always used this empathetic approach in their work (link articles), and their latest creation is a small viewing platform in timber, with a reflected finish and incredible views over the valley where the enchanted clouds it is named for float up.
 





The platform jutting out over the hillside is called “El Portal Invisible”: the invisible portal, because on one side its mirror finish integrates it so perfectly into the environment that it seems to disappear, and on the other it encourages introspection, opening a gateway into our inner selves.





The magnificent nature of the Andes that opens wide to the eyes of visitors sitting on the platform of only 13 square metres, gives you a new view of the surrounding world as well as encouraging a deeper reflection generated by the intense experience of nature provided by the architecture.



With El Portal Invisible, José Fernando Goméz and his associates at Natura Futura Arquitectura have created a cathartic gateway, a kind of “stargate”, built using a community, self-managed process.



Experimental, poetic architecture that crosses the border between tangible and non-tangible, to stress the right of humans to enjoy nature as a means of getting in tune with themselves and with others, looking toward a possible better world

Christiane Bürklein

Architects: Natura Futura Arquitectura
Location: Guapuloma, Provincia de Bolivar, Ecuador
Colaborators: Ramón Vivanco, Nathaly Gaona, Fausto Quiroz, Herman Laroze
Year: 2016
Area: 13 m2
Photograph: Natura Futura
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