Cariló, Partido de Pinamar, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Travesia House is a vacation home built in Constancia neighbourhood, a small urban appendix in the south of Cariló, a seaside town situated 400 km from Buenos Aires.
The design of the house seeks to achieve high degrees of privacy in a natural environment surrounded with houses in its perimeter and a boulevard in front. The absence of sidewalks and the zigzagging layout of the streets generate points of excessive proximity between the public and private space. As a result, a scheme that closes to both sides and a patio/expansion at front was proposed. The patio opens or closes to the street according to the clients’ desire or need, achieving permeability between front and back parks, or creating a blunt limit between the courtyard and the street by closing it.
The flat lot enabled the design of a public floor plan with full connection to different outdoor patios determined by the geometry of the house. The public area of the house functions as an «L» where the kitchen pivots to serve both the dining room as well as the gallery and barbecue area.
The living/dining area is a passageway linking the front and the back of the dwelling. To regulate privacy in connection to the street and generate the patio, a device was designed made of guayubira planks placed vertically on iron profiles linked by an axis that allows rotation. The mobile condition of the elements allows diverse openings at different times, depending on the users’ preference, solar incidence and the possible transformations of the neighborhood and its movement.
The upper floor is a bar that nests the bedrooms and a playroom with a direct orientation to the north. Here, a solar filter made of vertical planks placed at different angles works with the rotation of the sun creating a game of shadows. The simple action, but of complex technical resolution, that means rotating the volume of bedrooms and placing it perpendicular to the ground floor creates semi-covered areas on this plan. This generates a habitable void that complements the interior activities and creates the shelter and protection necessary to prolong outdoors stays.
