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Architects: Oficina X
- Area: 350 m²
- Year: 2019
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Photographs:Leonardo Méndez, Daniel Ojeda
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Manufacturers: AutoDesk, Chacore Concretos, Comercial Santo Domingo, Cype Software, Deca, Ftool, Inatec, LUMINOTECNIA, Portinari, Trimble Navigation, Uddo
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Lead Architect: Felipe Ramirez Ilculese, Nicole Jaquet
Text description provided by the architects. A pre-existing colonial tile house, near the lake and in the middle of the forest. San Bernardino, is a city where poetry becomes material. We abstract the essence of the house and deconstruct it. The long horizontal strokes that arise from the existing turn the object into a landscape. The "genius loci" manifests itself through the forest, and therefore understanding its essence would constitute the field of work where the idea is constructed. A tree articulates the translation of the access between thick earth walls built with the soil of the place. A door reveals it.
"Architecture is the wise, correct, and magnificent game of volumes under light" - Le Corbusier. We usually consider light as a tool of observation, however, what would happen if we invert this premise? We could eventually conjecture the hypothesis that objects are manifestations of light. Then it could be affirmed Kantianly that Architecture is the wise game of lights that acquire morphological qualities that are visible and tangible. Under this premise, the project is designed based on luminous transitions that emulate the atmosphere of the forest and confer an extraordinary result. Light-shadow-half-light-lights and shadows.
When Nietzsche exposed the centrality of the body, he highlighted the essence of "everything that is" in the body. But do we project with the body as the center, or are they just abstract ideas for the delight of the spirit? Nietzsche maintains that what we call "spirit" is nothing more than the reason of the body. The high temperatures of the place make evident the search for shade, where it is the body that projects. The beauty of a space is perfectly balanced to the senses, that space is the essence of truth.
The central element is the gallery, an intermediate space between interior and exterior, where the boundaries blur, we are inside and outside at the same time in connection with nature. This builds a relationship with the pre-existing gallery and articulates all the spaces, and above all, it constructs silence. "Beauty is not a substance in itself, but only a drawing of shadows, a play of light and dark produced by the juxtaposition of different substances... in the same way, beauty loses its existence if the effects of shadows are suppressed" In Praise of Shadows - Junichiro Tanizaki.
To inhabit each space is to participate in plastic sensations linked to the place through the shadow. The dematerialization of the upper plane abstracts the essence of the forest, whose lower plane is used as a tapestry, where sometimes we draw shadows, sometimes light, and above all, and at certain times, a magnificent play of lights and shadows. It is the shadow that gives that atmosphere, the abstraction of the forest. The architecture disappears, the architecture is the forest.
