Excerpt: Olaguer 3136, designed by VS arqs, is a housing project located in a predominantly residential neighborhood with a marked densification process. The common galleries and the staircase are positioned across the depth of the lot, proposing a route of changing lighting conditions and scale, to finish, on the fourth floor, in a glazed ceiling that blurs the horizontal limit. This route proposes, for its dimensions and strategic arrangement, places of community life that propose social exchange between neighbors as well as expansions and diverse uses.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] The building occupies a land of typical width and little depth (8.66m x 22m) in the neighborhood of Colegiales in the city of Buenos Aires. It is a predominantly residential neighborhood with a marked process of densification since a few years ago.
The project groups four houses and a studio organized in two blocks divided by a patio. Despite them all being different in their conformation and size, they have as a common denominator the way of entering through a zaguán that marks the transition between the inside and the outside, building an intermediate threshold between the street, the common galleries and the dwelling private.
The common galleries and the staircase are positioned across the depth of the lot, proposing a route of changing lighting conditions and scale, to finish, on the fourth floor, in a glazed ceiling that blurs the horizontal limit.
This route proposes, for its dimensions and strategic arrangement, places of community life that propose social exchange between neighbors as well as expansions and diverse uses. The elevator tower of textured (ribulated) concrete marks a vertical counterpoint to the horizontal galleries that goes with the circulation and entrances.
A metallic mesh was worked as a filter on the facades and the internal faces of the common spaces, forming several juxtaposed layers in the thickness of the envelope. The mesh is made up of fine steel rods. The material’s flexibility is used to build limits of different thicknesses and degrees of transparency according to the need and location. These meshes make up protection grilles, parasols, railings and screens. Between the mesh layers of the front and back front and the concrete body, a space is left that allows the incorporation of vegetation as part of the language. The shadows projected by the facade system are continuously modified, according to the time of day, incorporating time as another dimension of space.
Delimiting the building under these premises allows you to think of a sustainable urban piece, without the need for subsequent additions that end up altering the city landscape.
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