House among trees | Berson Arquitectura

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House among trees | Berson Arquitectura

Information

  • Completion year: 2016
  • Gross Built up Area: 230 sqm
  • Project Location: Buenos Aires
  • Country: Argentina
  • Photo Credits: Javier Agustin Rojas
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Excerpt: House among trees, designed by Berson Arquitectura, wraps around the trees on the site, which would organize the architecture by providing the “time” element through their bark and its wrinkles. Spaces are suggested by opacities and transparencies that ensure privacy and allow a full family life. Space was structured as a grid of modulated and continuous columns, a system that arises from the exploration of connectivity between domestic space and nature.

Project Description

[Text as submitted by architect] As soon as we arrived to the land, we were surprised by three breathtaking trees that stood in the middle of the place. It was precisely at that moment that I imagined the house wrapping those monumental conifers, which would organize the architecture by providing the “time” element through their bark and its wrinkles, through their changes from season to season, through the swinging caused by the wind. The house respects the land where it lies by using piles that barely pierce it, letting the huge roots of the trees run under the construction.

House among trees | Berson Arquitectura
© Berson Arquitectura
House among trees | Berson Arquitectura
© Berson Arquitectura

I tried to come up with a space as a shadows’ platform where, after a casting technique, light appears inside through three patios. We can see from outside a set of cloaks of rusty pieces that wrap architecture’s central body. Spaces are suggested by opacities and transparencies that ensure privacy and allow a full family life. Space was structured as a grid of modulated and continuous columns, a system that arises from the exploration of connectivity between domestic space and nature. Inside and outside melt by means of the three patios, which shape the different rooms and give them privacy.

The first patio is discovered through an intimate space entry’s ceremony, acting as a natural bellows that motivates to leave city’s noise behind and prepares the visitor to enter a private world that looks for self-construction. The other two patios mediate between public and private spaces, housing the existing trees. Light, greenery and the natural surroundings break into the domestic sphere’s heart. Rain, sun, birds and the falling leaves participate in everyday life.

House among trees | Berson Arquitectura
© Javier Agustin Rojas
House among trees | Berson Arquitectura
© Javier Agustin Rojas
House among trees | Berson Arquitectura
© Javier Agustin Rojas

The internal partition walls that separate the rooms are light, allowing assembly and disassembly with ease. This means high adaptability and flexibility of the spaces, enabling them to be redefined through time. The pergola acts as a fold between the house and the garden, spawning a cool place for the family meeting during the summer days. Over the double height living room there is a glazed box where the painting studio is found. From there it is possible to behold the whole vertical extension of the trees and their leafy crowns.

A terrace was built over the entire house, for the enjoyment of its inhabitants, enabling a dialogue with the trees. As a part of the house’s functioning, it will retrieve the rain water for irrigation and it will provide thermal insulation through a substratrum and vegetation coat, achieving bigger comfort. Thus, the terrace appears as an unexpected and intimate place, that reclaims the land where it lies. We bypass the roads flanked by Pampas grassland, and we get to native vegetation glades that attract butterflies and hummingbirds. From there, visitors behold sunsets and full moonlit nights.

House among trees | Berson Arquitectura
© Javier Agustin Rojas
House among trees | Berson Arquitectura
© Javier Agustin Rojas
House among trees | Berson Arquitectura
© Javier Agustin Rojas

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