The Güell house, located in a development in the northern area of Greater Buenos Aires, is implanted on a generously sized lot surrounded by low vegetation and a few trees that outline a diverse range of tones. The search for the best orientations and visuals allowed the project to not have the typical placement in these developments of a front and back with a backyard.
The volumetric configuration and position of the house on the land allows for the creation of three patios or large outdoor spaces, resulting in four main facades that take advantage of and focus on various situations. The housing program is divided into the three classic groups: public area, private area, and service area.
Each one appears deliberately differentiated, not only by its materiality but also by clear morphological operations that regulate opacity or transparency for each use: a stone envelope - a concrete prism with transparent faces - an opaque wooden cube, respectively. The completely opaque envelope, made of blasting stone, encircles the social area within its zigzagging path. Along its walk, it leans against the front of the land and bends perpendicular to the street, dividing the lot in two.
This stone skin structures and organizes the ground floor, generating a blind back to the street and opening up with fully glazed faces to the park, generating an immediate interior-exterior relationship. This element envelops, in its passage, a living room, a formal dining room, the kitchen-dining room, and a children's playroom, and at the other end, a study and a recreational space, separated by a semi-internal patio that links perpendicularly to the garden. Natural light is a free material and must be used; this patio absorbs and illuminates the premises that surround it.
The volume of wood that contains the service area appears leaning against the back of the stone envelope, again dividing the land and ultimately generating three main outdoor spaces: a large access plaza towards the street, a more playful patio towards the back that provides an outdoor space for the playroom, and the third and most important: the garden. These last two parts of the house rest on the ground, like a base in contact with the earth. They seem to emerge naturally from the grass like stones and branches, but with strong geometric lines, and their materiality refers to this. A concrete ship lands on them. A pure, artificial box, without openings or cuts, almost like a conceptual obsession. The Box, an evident compositional piece that dominates the work, flies over the front to form the entrance porch and towards the garden to contain the gallery. Some of its faces dematerialize, and the interior is emptied to be occupied with 4 en-suite bedrooms and the master suite. The service area is resolved with a wooden lattice that filters and regulates the entry of natural light and guarantees the privacy of the rooms.
The strong geometric presence is felt, it is present in a composition of straight lines and pure planes, in which circular perforations appear that break with that logic. The circle is not arbitrary, its infinite tangents make it not be taken from the edges of the plane in which it is located, and it dances freely within it. The search for spatiality in interior situations was a premise. The gallery slab enters the kitchen and dining room, generating different heights. In addition to this, a slope in the living room creates a height and a half that continues to the outside, generating a bridge that divides the pool in two. The pool colonizes the immediate outdoor spaces with an elongated water mirror that articulates the house with the park. Undulating flashes of light invade the surrounding interior spaces, generating the feeling that the limits between the interior and exterior are so fragile that they seem to break.
The park is invaded by small undulating grassy hills that generate a moving landscape that welcomes different plant species and outdoor living situations. The volumetric simplicity of this house allows the use of materials with rough textures on large surfaces, such as stone, but also of materials that practically dematerialize the boundary between the interior and exterior, such as glass or semi-transparent ribbed wood. On the upper floor, exposed concrete is used as a frame for the bedrooms, boasting its simplicity and essence, which does not require coatings. Smooth plastic phenolic formwork was used for the slabs and horizontal pieces, and wooden board formwork with varying lengths was used for the partitions. The use of large travertine pieces on the floors and their continuity with the exterior and pool situations, along with the wooden details, complete the spatial quality and warmth of this home.
Team:
Project and direction:OON ARCHITECTURE
Construction: ROBRA construcciones
Photographer: Alejandro Peral
