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Architects: BBOA - Balparda Brunel Oficina de Arquitectura
- Area: 200 m²
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Photographs:Javier Agustín Rojas
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Lead Architect: Geronimo Galli
Text description provided by the architects. Towards the 90s, there is in Argentina an alternative to residential buildings in protected areas known as ìgated neighborhoodsî, with the intention to provide answers to the issues related to insecurity. This phenomenon proliferated as an unfortunate mechanism of city growth, emphasized by the lack of corresponding regulations and generating a critical urban development of new gated areas, whose formal limits are within the existing urban landscape and leading -in most of the cases- to situations of ill-solved urban situations in the adjoined spaces.
The assignment of this project consists of the development of a single-family house in a gated community in the northeast part of the city of Rosario, Argentina. Such neighborhood consists of a plot of 80 sites of 450 m2 (0,11 acres each).
After developing the profile of the potential families, the foundations for the development of a 200 square meters (0.50 acres of land) house in two levels were laid, with a precise delineation of the quantity, type of uses and local premises. The determination of the surface to be built meant a challenge in itself, as the requirement entailed a trace which will occupy a large portion of the plot.
Once it was planned on the site quantitatively, there was evidence that there were certain critical relationships with the adjacent plots, as the sites keep a strong link of open areas among the building lines. Although there is a no-build open space among the sites which guarantee the building of detached houses, the dimensions of those open spaces do not surpass the fact that they are mere places of transit. The acknowledgment of this situation, and others which may arise as we walk around the neighborhood lead us to question ourselves in terms of how ìprivateî those sites really are.
In this way, the Project emphasizes the development of a house which will achieve certain distance from the adjacent buildings in those facades which will be in direct contact with the outside, that is to say, in their open faces; and at the same time it will close on the faces which are closest to the boundaries, with the intention to generate a higher level of privacy inside.
For that purpose, a series of volumetric substraction operations were carried out, which verified the distances which were expected with the adjacent boundaries, considering the orientations and the views chosen for every interior space and other requirements such as partially covered areas for parking and enclosed patios.
Secondly, two interior patios where incorporated in the social area, being the main resource from which it is possible to extend the limits of the interior area to a controlled interstice, which offers greater privacy; at the same time results in the perception of a wider space in the ground floor. As they are incorporated within the envelope, both patios become a virtual extension of the internal area of the house, where the visual limit stretches beyond the glasses and it configures a healthy filter for individual lifestyle within a gated community.
The proposal does not incorporate windows in its perimeter, but for a single exception; surrounded by an adjacent brick wall which is only interrupted by opposing corners, both in the plan and in the elevation. The morphological aspect of the house when walking along side it gives the feeling that it is a completely closed house. However, this perception is radically opposed from the inside, where the premises acquire a direct relationship with the exterior with the existence of new setbacks and, mainly, the patios.
