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Architects: Equipo de Arquitectura
- Area: 430 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Federico Cairoli
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Lead Architects: Horacio Cherniavsky, Viviana Pozzoli
Text description provided by the architects. As time passes, architectural criteria adapt to the collective knowledge and qualities we consider fundamental. Although the focus of practice has evolved throughout the constant process of building the discipline, the main objective of architecture has remained the same since humans have extended their quest for inhabitation beyond the simple act of providing shelter, which is to elevate our existential relationship of being in the world.
With the creation of spaces that connect us to a sense of belonging to the context, the place, and the environment, we consolidate our relationship with the environment, understanding that living in a qualitative sense is conditioned by the configuration of those spaces. The channels to build this well-being vary and depend on many factors. Still, we can identify and agree on certain considerations that favor the construction of a place that impacts us positively and excites us.
Constant contact with vegetation and nature has shown that our link with the surroundings and the environment is inextricable. In this case, native plants are used as a landscaping principle, betting on local flora and defending the natural biodiversity that promotes this type of vegetation. The presence of plants represents life, and in a house, it improves the quality of the air and the quality of the architectural experience, especially when vegetation is the protagonist. This amalgam between the artificial and the natural represents our relationship with the world we inhabit.
Controlled and filtered natural light plays a crucial role in creating spaces connecting us to time, seasons, and movement. Cross ventilation in all spaces ensures oxygen renewal and temperature and humidity regulation during the warmer months. It seems fundamental to us to create an architecture that controls and allows the connection between the interior and the exterior, that breathes and regulates light and ventilation.
Using natural materials is also part of this architectural search, opting for local materials such as stone, brick, wood, and concrete. These materials are transformed and worked by local craftsmen, imprinting a knowledge and tradition that represent the ways of doing things in our context.
Each material, in turn, responds to the logic of its nature. The stone forms the house's base, linked to the earth by its weight and behavior as a retaining wall. Then come the bricks, lighter elements that allow stacking, and an arrangement that organizes the spaces of the upper floors. Much lighter wood allows us to generate mobile panels, furniture, and doors. Concrete, on the other hand, gives us the freedom to organize the structure based on the spatial and functional scheme of the house.
The site where the house is located has a significant slope and a tree that welcomes us, which allowed us to arrange the house on three levels: the parking and service area on the lower level, the social area on the first level, and the private area on the second level. A conventionally sized lot thus becomes a system of spaces connected by courtyards that distribute light, oxygen, ventilation, and biodiversity.
The transparency of the social area on the first level contrasts with the opacity of the second level, where the bedrooms, laundry room, and office are located, programs that require greater privacy. The relevance of designing a house that allows spatial amplitude, linking but protecting itself from the outside, with shadows, the ability to breathe, and a relationship with matter and nature, makes the architecture a direct response to the local reality.
