House C.A / Pablo Gagliardo, María Eugenia Díaz

Curated by Danae Santibañez

Architects: Pablo Gagliardo, María Eugenia Díaz
Area: 370 m²
Year: 2013
Photographs:Ramiro Sosa

Text description provided by the architects. Detached house located in Fisherton, a mainly residential neighborhood a few kilometers from the center of the city of Rosario, Argentina. The land, a 20 x 60 m lot in a regular trace, has the distinction of being the finish of an urban passage. Besides, it is located between two lots with some strong elements that conditioned the implementation of the house. To the east, a built-up dividing wall constituting a quite rigid boundary, and west, a garden with abundant grove, generating a blurred division of vegetation. The project is proposed in order to take advantage of this situation, leaning on the dividing wall built and respecting a large existing tree, opening the environments towards the interior of the lot and integrating them with the existing vegetation.

The front of the house, south oriented, is closed and private; while the program opens to the interior, orienting all social areas to the north and regulating the privacy of the living spaces. The use of concrete in the structure allows the generation of continuous glazed surfaces, which dilutes the limits and integrates the garden with the interior completely and the environments between them, giving the sensation of a single space. As enclosure of the entrance a mesh top is used, that is the soul of the reinforced concrete, and that with time will be covered with vegetation, simulating a concreting ‘green process’.

The program is organized in two volumes, of different characteristics, connected to each other through the entrance and a double-height hall, that distributes to the different areas of the house. The volume supported on the east is a plate, of great longitudinal tension, organized in two levels that contain the daily functions of the program: living and dining room, kitchen and main suite in ground floor; while the three bedrooms of the children are situated in the top floor. The plate opens to the north and is dematerialized, first with a gallery in the ground floor, and then with another in double height, which connects the two levels, until you reach the solarium and pool at the bottom of the land.

The storage spaces are raised on the constituted dividing wall, in order to clear the interiors and grant greater flexibility to the spaces. The second volume hosts the social functions of the house: a dining room height and a half, which has three fully glazed faces and a sloping concrete roof with a large blind paw to the south that folds and ends as a floor for the parking of the cars. This inclination helps the rainwater run off the concrete wall, and with the pass of time, will generate a green effect on that wall, harmonizing with all existing vegetation.