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Architects: A3 Luppi Ugalde Winter
- Area: 1009 m²
- Year: 2018
- Photographs: Alejandro Peral
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Lead Architects: Santiago Luppi, Javier Ugalde, Andrea Winter
"A man travels the world looking for what he needs and returns home to find it" George Moore. This building, located in the Coghlan neighbourhood of the City of Buenos Aires, begins with the premise of solving a set of multi-family homes and a private house on the same plot. In this framework and following the challenge of reflecting on contemporary living, a proposal that investigates the limits between public and private areas arises. The interior, the exterior and the spaces of transition generate dynamic and participatory relationships.
The totality of the whole is thought of in terms of community, where nucleus, circulations and common areas are part of a circulation path that provides the sensation of inhabiting not only an individual home but the entire building. Since circulation as a social event is one of the most important characteristics of the building, the ground floor functions as the beginning of this tour while the leisure terrace becomes its climax.
When it comes to the structure of the whole, it is organized having the main housing block in the front and the individual house at the back. The main body consists of seven units. From the first to the third floor there are two units on each floor, while the fourth floor is shared by two facing units with a shared terrace. The house, in turn, is intended to generate the smallest possible footprint, freeing ground for the front and back courtyards, which is why it is developed in three levels.
The courtyard, a functional and spatial link. This project proposes a re-elaboration of the colonial houses of the beginning of the century where the courtyard was the heart around which daily life was organized. The access to the homes is generated crossing the bridges that pass over the courtyards while the internal route of the homes circulates these spaces obtaining natural light and visual links. These metal links become spaces of transition, which as a "doorway" give a pause before entering the homes. Materiality. A play of transparencies. The building combines exposed concrete, masonry and glass planes. Through successive opaque and transparent modules, a composition of planes is generated, the protagonists of the set being the bridges made of galvanized iron sheets joined together like an artisan's loom.
These suspended pieces give the space an atmosphere of lightness and fluidity. "He who looks outwards, dreams; he who looks inwards, awakens. " Carl Jung. This building is first of all the invitation to live in community, to be part of a whole, where the parties are protagonists. The flexibility in the articulation of the habitable modules, the relationship with the hollows, the distribution of the common areas and the circulation as a social event are the main elements of the proposal. The whole is alive in the dynamism of those who inhabit it.
