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Architects: Grupo Culata Jovái
- Year: 2013
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Photographs:Federico Cairoli
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Text description provided by the architects. A Spanish photographer living in Paraguay, 12 years after "escaping" the Spanish economic boom.
A tight budget financed the purchase of a house in downtown Asuncion, the renovations needed to turn the property into a hostel and the architect's fees.
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A house built in 1920, with a traditional "chorizo" typology, which had undergone renovations completely dissociated from the original building.
Bearing brick walls 0.30 m thick. Wooden Roof Structure entirely inhabited by kupi'i (termites in Guarani) + tiles and shingles. The "additions": in front, a structure covers the old terrace and at the back, a second floor adds a bedroom.
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What was logical for us was to do what we think is architecture, especially in times of crisis.
"Taking advantage of the resources available to solve most problems. Dissociating the -project- from the -ego- to address real and essential problems of habitability."
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We decided to use a corrugated sheet metal roof with "C" profiles for the inevitable change of roof.
Building an Outside. Human dwelling is a complex activity, we dwell according to our human-personal condition and in relationship to the other. A family home serves as for resting purposes just as a hostel, where each individual owns their personal space and also shares the community space; the difference lies in the degree of inter-personal relationship.
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Living and circulating, in private and in correlation with others; here the spaces are sized according to the ratio of fluxes of such actions. We intervened a space for private circulation, corresponding to a single family house, and expanded the intermediate living and common circulation space.
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A wall, a quarry, material available. The bricks recovered from the demolition make up the new boundary outside, it ceases to be a load-bearing wall, with a thickness of 0.15 m. and breaks that give enough inertia to withstand a longitudinal slab 8 cm thick, lightened with rubble from the demolition. Over it, a continuous wall made of bricks in zigzag encloses the rooms.
We assume the "additions" without dogmatic prejudices of the restoration. For privacy and to provide natural cross ventilation, we built a filter-wall on the facade with ceramic shingles from the demolition of the original roof.
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We reuse, conserve and transform all the original openings, floors and demolition woodwork for mezzanines. The project was delivered with a minimum level of finishes, only the essentials to live a healthy and quality space. The living and program will finish the house, these correspond to a very intimate aesthetic of a client / friend / artist, who from this home / business / life-trench aims to tell a story from the image.
A story of how today it is giving refuge to Spaniards who come to look for work in a country that provided them the labor to build the m2 that partly generated the bubble from which they flee today.