Esteras Perrote: We imagine a continuous space between the street and the house, where the boundaries dissolve and coexist. A series of circular columns that configure a domestic landscape, where the space-structure is the base matrix and the objective is not the object but the experience. The plot structures the program and supports it, it does not alter the ground. The ramp extends the ground and the use, to look down on a landscape of mountains and plains.
Location
The project is located in a peripheral neighborhood in the south west of the city of Córdoba. A recent neighborhood, like many others that extend around. Characteristic for being a checkerboard inserted on the plain, in relation to the mountain range, with only streets and service structures. In this real estate logic of residential tests on small lots, the commission of a young single-family home is born, which is inserted in two small and contiguous lots. Facing north towards the main artery of the neighborhood and facing a large community green space, the contiguous lots make up a dimension of 24 meters wide x 22 meters deep.
12 columns and free ground floor
As a first response to the site visit, in an arid environment with limited dimensions to develop a family housing program, the proposal was to raise the residential program to the upper floor, thus freeing up the entire land for public and shared use. In this way, one lot is completely destined for green space, while the other portion of the land is for other programs that make up living. In relation to 12 circular columns of 30 cm in diameter, a free program is developed on the ground floor that houses those complementary programs, parking, laundry and barbecue. These programs are gathered around a compact core towards the interior of the lot, with the intention of freeing up the surface as much as possible, so that life happens around the columns and the green.
The ramp
In relation to the connection between the public and the private, the above and the below, the ramp is proposed as an intermediation between these opposite aspects. With the concept of stimulating a route and extending the ground towards the upper floor, the ramp is born and detaches itself until reaching a landing/viewpoint, then continues to rise until reaching the entrance of the house, where a landing sets back inwards and reveals its column, there the arrival that embraces the arrival extends.
Program
The commission comes from a young family with two very young daughters, where the greatest response had to be in the coexistence of the different ages and uses of the spaces in perfect harmony. In relation to these 12 circular columns, a flexible, traditional use program is proposed, with individual bedrooms and bathroom cores, but with the work put into the circulations and the possibilities that arise from this. In this way, the bathroom and kitchen cores occur in relation to other spaces and guarantee a route through the house.
Structure and space
The structure-space is the base matrix, where the objective is not the object but the experience. The material and the technique pay homage to the art of building. Concrete as a configuring element of the identity of the house, exploring and exploiting its technical and plastic capacities to achieve constructive and spatial efficiency. The experience of living among columns, the honesty of support, of its own weight and gravity.
Sustainability
Made of noble materials, sustainability in this proposal is understood as the low impact on the maintenance of the house, as well as in the basic concepts of natural sunlight and cross ventilation, where the program does not generate watertight spaces, but on the contrary, flows lengthwise and widthwise guaranteeing connections.
Raising the program and freeing the ground, maintaining its original condition, was the first premise to avoid modifying its natural and permeable condition.
