Urban Refuge Studio House / Estudio Berzero Jaros. Image
While many of the homes built during the Modern Movement—as design experiments on new ways of living—fostered the early emergence of "programmatic hybrids" by typically linking the residences of artists, painters, or architects with their workspaces (one need only recall, for instance, the atelier Le Corbusier designed for painter Amédée Ozenfant in 1922), today, new work models and hyperconnectivity have further driven the development of a new typology where workspaces are integrated into residential architecture. Architects, writers, photographers, designers, and painters increasingly choose to integrate their studios and workshops into their homes, merging living and working into a single whole.
Regardless of the design adopted for kitchen spaces, for some years now and with increasing frequency, many architects have been deciding to design kitchens by integrating them into other rooms in the home. Free of dividing walls or joinery, integrated kitchens are implemented with the aim of leaving the activities that take place there in full view of everyone, encouraging interaction and communication between the inhabitants.
Tools developed for woodworking, along with new production, milling, and treatment techniques, have gradually yielded highly diverse, high-quality products in various sizes, strengths, tones, shapes, and colors. These advancements have allowed wood, as a resource, to meet a wide range of construction needs, serving as structural support, building envelopes, cladding, or furniture in a vast number of architectural projects.
Whether applied as cladding to steel or timber frame structures or to structures built by traditional means, sheet metal offers an array of advantages as a building material, thanks to its low cost, ease of maintenance, and versatility.
The Bicentennial Argentine Credit Program for Single-Family Housing, commonly known as PRO.CRE.AR, is a program created in 2012 by the national government of Argentina to support and incentivize the construction of new housing in the country through subsidized loans. Through this program, many families gained the opportunity to build their first home of their own, which in turn generated an increase in the demand for local design and construction. Consequently, these housing loans also opened doors for young firms and studios to produce and build local architecture, navigating the limitations imposed by the loan's financial framework and its constraints on floor area and timeline.
It's safe to say that concrete is one of the most utilized construction materials in large-scale architectural projects. In Argentina, the use of concrete to construct high-rise apartment buildings offers a variety of advantages, especially when it comes to durability and the time it takes to build. This has made it the go-to material for many architects.
Thanks to its aesthetic qualities and malleability, concrete is the darling of the world's builders and architects. In Argentina in particular, concrete's durability and adaptability to a range of climatic conditions makes it one of the most sought after construction materials, demonstrated by, not only the country's countless museums, hotels, hospitals, but by its residential and smaller-scale buildings as well.
Manufacturers: FV, Fabricaciones Santa Fe, Fisa metal, Germat SRL, La Oficina, +4Mixawood, Revestimientos Santa Fe, Rio Construcciones, Soldar Santa Fe-4
In buildings dedicated to workplace activities, proper spatial design plays a fundamental role. Considering variables such as lighting, acoustic insulation, the relationship between workstations, or ceiling heights often optimizes business performance while simultaneously ensuring user comfort. Specific requirements depend on the building's purpose: while certain activities demand greater concentration, others require interaction among team members, fostering collaborative processes. Architecture must be able to provide solutions to these requirements, even considering how these activities might evolve over time.
Brick is, without a doubt, the building material most widely validated by the collective imagination; from children's fables to the most experimental narratives, many have drawn inspiration from the diverse meanings shaped by its distinctive character.
So begins "Arquitecturas Argentinas con Ladrillo" (Argentine Brick Architecture), a book edited by Bisman Ediciones and co-published by the Universidad de Morón and Grupo UNICER, with the participation of the Universidad Católica de Córdoba. Conceived as a compendium, it features a meticulous selection of recently built projects in Argentina sharing a clear common denominator: the study and use of brick as a fundamental building material to create architecture.
Through various graphic resources such as floor plans, photographs, and unprecedented construction details, the book functions as a true catalog of typologies, exploring the diversity and versatility of masonry applications in the region. The volume compiles history, technique, and contemporary reference projects, demonstrating how brick has inevitably established itself as a characteristic and defining material of Argentine and Latin American architecture.