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Architects: G2 Estudio
- Area: 680 m²
- Year: 2007
- Photographs: Laila Sartoni
Text description provided by the architects. Context
San Carlos de Bariloche is a touristic city located in the national park Nahuel Huapi, Argentinean Patagonia. Founded around 1895 by German immigrants, which started being an Exchange commercial village with Chile and a holiday’s place for the boldest Argentinean citizens of that era. The architecture, recognize on her first expressions by wooden houses with pronounced ceilings and tiles of Alerce (regional tree), show a peculiar image of the village. The architect Alejandro Bustillo to the years 1935-1945 finished outlining the architectural image of the city, building a lot of public facilities, churches, hotels, with tough inspiration in the picturesque European chalets of the beginning of XIX century. Trying, contradictorily, “to define a regional style”, this situation occurred in all the country, even also to this day. Leaving an intense identification in the collective consciousness with colonial stages and Europeanized trends in relation to the topologies of housing (the Spanish colonial urbanism, or some European style for the farms, “chorizo” houses with different stylistic treatment in the facades for the cities, the chalets for the suburbs, mountain houses for touristic places). Some buildings gets out of the stereotypes but they can´t generate identity.
Los Cerezos, was the first house by G2 Estudio in the Argentinean Patagonia, This one try to explore and give new answers to the classic typology of mountain houses, having to face not only hard but also comic situations for the acceptance, approval and implementation of the project.
Hunt, Shelter, Solaz
After much discussion, hunts, good wines with the owner, and understanding without prejudices about the life of a professional hunter in the XXI century, sophisticated one certainly; we decided to reinterpret the concept of “shelter-home” for him and his family.
The set point was to realize a house with define uses: public and private, cores grouped in recreation activities without disturbing the family privacy. The way they are used to live define that would be a wide and warm solaz-room, comfort to all the public activities, where they can sit in front of the fire, drink an appetizer or simply enjoy the landscape listening to music, reading, or playing snooker in the mezzanine with friends after a good hunt. Also, should be equipped with a weapons shelf. It would have a big terrace to enjoy the sunny days, a large Kitchen-Breakfast, and an independent dining-room with double height roof where they can entertain their guests or take a breakfast on the next terrace contemplating the nature.
According to their active social life, the master room should be close to the public areas, but separated of the private ones, to not disturb the little children. The base volume should contain the children and guests room, with all the facilities and an independent access, so they could rent this sector of the house. They also need a separate apartment to receive a whole family (as a special guest), located under the park access, including treatment of green roof.
The public areas should have big fireplaces to enjoy the fire and get warm, and wide walls to expose trophies.
Morphology - Architecture
Wooden volumes with soft shapes define the public areas (living-room, library, and the snooker-room, designed to have a good acoustic performance) are separated, getting in tension and connected by two main axis, an outside-inside-outside (cold hall, distributing hall, terrace) and a private-public one (trophy expose, private stair).
All this would be supported on a base volume of stone resting firmly on the ground, containing private uses.
The treatment of the full and empty walls attempts to generate places where the trophies could be exposed, and minimize the number of windows to not have heat lose. Stone and wood textures, continuous folded ribbons of concrete for hunting books define the interior design.
Finally, the house is the result of a long process of understanding and building design with the customer, his preferences, expectations and dreams, because that is what architecture is about.
