The Project is an apartment extension on a building top floor rooftop, located in Palermo neighborhood, in Buenos Aires.
Our intention was to recreate a small domestic world and to create the sensation of living in a cabin in the middle of the city, in a warm place that invites contemplation.
To inhabit this place offers different perspectives, sometimes a long distance glance at the urban landscape and others, an intimate contemplation of its small “patios” courtyards.
The proposal doubles the existing's apartment surface. We to build as much space as possible in order to respond to programmatic decided and use needs that we were requested: on one side, an important and fluid relation with external / outdoor space and on the other side, a living place that can accommodate easily to the different ways of living that may vary over time.
The Project consists of three levels. The first pre-existing level, was intervened to create a kitchen and living room space. These two spaces can be separated or integrated thanks to a hidden moving panels system.
On this level there was an open terrace, in which we developed the work and resting areas, with a light construction system. These spaces are articulated from a central service nucleus and two patios. The nucleus allowed us to liberate the perimeter and in this way maximize the incoming natural light; the “patios” location enabled each room had a direct relationship with an exterior/outdoor space.
On the third level, we projected a green terrace as an expansion and contemplation space, surrounded by abundant native high-height vegetation.
The plant´s conception proposes flexibility: the user has the possibility to transform space in different ways through time. The panel system, that is made of cabinets and moving hidden doors, erases completely the fixed partitions of the rooms and in this way allows different space and use configurations.
A new dimension is incorporated – time – which allows to modify and manipulate space according to the user's needs. The project takes plasticity and transformation concepts in the living experience to the limit.
Team:
Office of Architecture: Study of Ana Smud and Daniel Zelcer
Project team: Ana Sol Smud, Daniel Zelcer, Milagros Ratto
Builder: Sebastian Aguero
Art direction of photographs: Marilina Martignone
Photographs: Javier Agustin Rojas
Materials Used:
Ground floor: (existing access floor)
The ground and access floor of the unit is the existing floor (it was part of the original construction of the building).
The materials at this level are wood flooring, exposed concrete ceiling and
aluminum carpentry.
A kitchen was incorporated which is separated from the living room with a folding
wooden enclosure.
The kitchen has all the furniture in wood and the countertop and raised in gray polished cement.
Floor 1 floor:
This level is a new work that was carried out with a dry construction system with a metallic structure.
Internally everything is in wood, flooring, wall cladding and ceiling.
The bathrooms have green polished cement flooring, walls and countertops.
Terrace :
The terrace has a very vegetated garden and a wooden deck.
