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Architects: Arquitectura Spinetta
- Area: 440 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Ramiro Sosa
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Lead Architect: Melina Spinetta
“The House of the 7 Courtyards” is located on a large plot of land, in front of the runway of the Rosario airport and the railway tracks. Both pre-existing elements present a strong horizontality as elements of the environment and it was a decision to enhance them in the project through the visuals, and also, as a starting point for the implementation of the house extended across the width of the lot.
In the project, covered spaces are interspersed with a total of 7 courtyards with vegetation. The most private environments are housed in opaque volumes covered in red brick and among them, the social meeting spaces with large glass surfaces that overlook the galleries. In this way, the possibility of having two perspectives is enabled: a vast one of the landscape, and another introspective view allowed by the courtyards as a shelter for intimacy.
The 7 courtyards allow sunlight and ventilation to enter all environments through the design of eaves and the orientation of openings. The use of metal meshes at the top solves the security issue while not interrupting the visual at eye level. Each of the courtyards has its own identity conferred by the design of native vegetation based on pampas grasslands and climbing and hanging vines. They are species collected from the surrounding ecosystem generating continuity of biological corridors into domestic gardens, providing shelter and food for insects, invertebrates, birds, and small animals.
The bioclimatic strategies adopted respond to the need to promote certain sustainable practices such as cross ventilation, protective eaves, double walls, double-glazed windows, rainwater collection, solar water heaters, waste separation for recycling, and composting on the grounds.
Generous dimensions of the environments, openings at different heights allowing light to enter from different angles, beams and slabs that go up and down, added to the textures of brick and exposed concrete, give dynamism and spatial richness to the interiors. The transition between interior and exterior has a sensory thickness being mediated by courtyards with vegetation, eaves, galleries, shutters, and mobile curtains, which as filters allow unique spatial experiences where senses and emotions are at play.
A succession of microcosms that allow inhabiting the house by stopping, through sensory experiences of apprehension of the surroundings. The displacement is enriched through sounds and smells, textures and temperature of materials, wind in plants, lightly filtered through vegetation or strong through openings, hummingbirds, and butterflies that surprise, and colors that accompany the seasons, everything comes together in the different scenarios that consolidate the internal universe of the house and its inhabitants.
Architecture presents itself as a device through which exchanges between climate, nature, and people can be regulated, inviting us to participate in the daily construction of a domestic scenario committed to the environment it inhabits.
