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Architects: Øblicuo
- Area: 180 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:José Rozón
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Manufacturers: AutoDesk, Trimble
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Lead Architect: Alejandro Frias, Carlos Encarnación.
Text description provided by the architects. A residential project located in the municipality of Las Terrenas, province of Samaná, a peninsula located northeast of the Dominican Republic. The home is located on a 1,000m2 lot within a private tourist complex with direct access to the beach. This is a 180m2 house with a rectangular floor plan that has very well defined 2 main areas, social area and semi-private area, both with independent access to generate privacy for the user and different experiences when entering it.
The house establishes a silent link with the street, this connection with the environment occurs only through a wooden door, visible from the outside and that connects us with the terrace, where the most important activities of the house occur. The facade of openwork blocks is part of the aesthetic solution of the house and at the same time protects it from the sun, understands the breezes of the tropical climate of the area, constantly ventilating the space naturally.
Independent and more intimate access to the semi-private area, through a corridor that functions as a border between the interior and the exterior, prepares us for calm and encloses us between walls covered in coralline (Coral Stone), a material that connects with the sea and the Caribbean architectural beauty.
The dining room and kitchen are not only spaces for people to gather to prepare and consume food, but they also provide a reflective, lingering, and mature atmosphere, encouraging meaningful conversations and moments of introspection. The architecture and design of the Retiro understand the importance of abundant natural light in spaces, but also understand darkness, that light that regardless of the materials embraces us and gives us warmth.
The simplicity and lightness of the design played a fundamental part in the time and efficiency of its construction, mixing traditional construction methods with contemporary methods, and favoring local and specialized labor. Steel, wood, concrete, coralline and travertine marble not only seek to provide aesthetics, but will also make the project last over time, seeking what is lasting, rather than the temporality of fashion.
El Retiro is defined as a house that understands the purpose of residential architecture as a refuge, where the technical and the emotional coexist, where the user can choose their experience of how to inhabit it, whether sharing with close beings or invoking us to the silence of our inside.
