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This is a selection of projects our office works on. After many years in architecture and teaching, we present aspects of our “voice”; a set of reflections on how to practice architecture.

MARTINDALE HOUSE
PROYECTO RESIDENCIAL | BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA



This project is a 500 square meters residence on a 2000 square meters lot in a gated neighborhood on the outskirts of the Metropolis of Buenos Aires – Argentina.
A house or home in a gated community is one of the most common programs for architects in the metropolitan and suburban area of the city of Buenos Aires, a topic that seduced us into a deep reflection on this demand. With the rise of gated communities starting in the 1980s on the outskirts of Buenos Aires and large cities around the world, particular housing challenges arise in a cellular situation on top of organic blocks linked to simple and closed vehicular systems. We understood this topic as giving shape to cells in this organic systems within generally soft streets in the morphology of the master plan. We constantly imagined photos of Microscopes on leaves of vegetation.


If we study the history of the suburban house in Buenos Aires, we will notice that the house of the new suburban neighborhoods that emerged in the last 18th and 20th centuries, although in free circulation urban zones, had large windows in their common use areas, mainly “Living-Rooms”, dining rooms and kitchens, which allowed the house to be exposed and in control of the urban space by living in direct relationship with it. It could also be called public or Sub-Urban space, this large common resulting space made up of the street and its sidewalks, the vegetation in the sidewalk beds and the trees that were almost always located forming the escape from the streets.  The houses were part of the Urban space, and this one of them. Private and public property were related without or with few limits.






The growth of cities and expansion of the metropolitan area increasingly made this urban space become hostile. From there, not only would one lose privacy when using their home, but they could also be exposed to possible theft or citizens with wrong intentions. For this reason, the houses were closed little by little, first with low limits or green fences, then taller fences, after that many times with walls and gates, in which all the private green area possible is enveloped according to the survey or the title of the property, protecting it from those who circulate freely by it. A similar phenomenon occurred many times in private neighborhoods, especially in the oldest ones, with the exception that the main reason is not security (an aspect already solved by the perimeter of the closed neighborhood itself) but exposure to pedestrians or cars circulating that take away privacy from the use of the shared or open spaces of the houses.





This home addresses the problem by completely closing it off from exposure to the Street. We made the decision that no space other than the entrances are linked to the circulatory system of the Neighborhood. Two large reinforced concrete walls along the entire front contain a pause in the central axis of the land where the house is accessed, and a retreat on one of its sides where a vehicular access to a side garage is proposed.

Nearby neighbors in the adjoining “cells” and retreats suggested we approach the design with the presence of several patios that allow for the creation of contained green spaces, allowing the spatiality of the home to propose a feeling of openness, freedom and privacy. In this case, a lot in the Southern hemisphere with the North in one of its internal angles, allowed for a lot of sunlight in the garden of the house without it generating shadows, but we suggested openings so that the afternoon sun is permeable in every interior space.

We solved a home on the ground floor, taking only the main suite and its expansions to the upper floor. The landscaping of the front, patios and garden of the house was carried out with native vegetation. The result is a façade with an austere but absent language in which the house acts as a frame for the landscaping and the access sequence.







©2024