Excerpt: Segura 1124, designed by Primer Piso Arquitectos, adopts the requirements that the pandemic has indicated to the architects as elementary: the relationship with the green space, the privacy between units and the incorporation of light and flexible spaces that could, perhaps, function as home offices or an extra bedroom.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] The Segura 1124 building is located on a 165m2 lot, on a narrow and busy street in the department of Godoy Cruz, Mendoza, in a low-rise residential area undergoing transformation and densification. A municipal particularity of the land acts as a conditioner and consists in unaffected a block heart in the last 2 meters towards the bottom of the land. The implantation is then the result of freeing up a space in front of the land for the storage of vehicles and the liberation of the rear “patio” to form the heart of the block required by the municipality.
The project premise was to resolve two functional units with one bedroom + a study or room that could be used sporadically as a second bedroom. As a result, the construction has two units with a total of 156 m2 covered, a unit of 68m2 of its own and another of 75 m2 of its own and 13m2 of common spaces.
PROGRAM
A new client, another piece of land, another project, but a program similar to Martínez 3458 in terms of multifamily housing. This project gives us the chance to reconsider the elements to combine them again trying to verify both material and spatial aspects that emerged during the construction process of the previous building and the design of Segura 1124. This building plays, like Martínez, with the same rules: land between party walls with identical orientations, particular municipal limitations and little surface area to develop apartment units that had to be comfortable, adopting the requirements that the pandemic has indicated to us as elementary: the relationship with the green space, the privacy between units and the incorporation of light and flexible spaces that could, perhaps, function as home offices or an extra bedroom.
Each unit has its own expansion. Green spaces were created for both apartments, the lower one has 2 of its own gardens and the upper one achieves its privacy towards the front, with a flower bed next to the bedroom that allows nature to be integrated into daily living and in the background with a 60 cm sill that allows you to support pots while avoiding direct views of the patio below. This unit has a small patio that completes it.
RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SITE
In front of the land, across the street, there is a linear park with large-scale vegetation and green spaces with high attendance by society, recreational and sports activities and two means of sustainable connection, the electric tram metro and one of the cycle longest roads in Greater Mendoza. This gives the inhabitants of this site a great quality of life and the building, the possibility of looking for views in this green lung, for which reason screening is used to give texture and light to each space and in turn generate privacy and security. in front of the apartments.
For the study, this work allows the possibility of thinking about living in relation to the city. Like the Martínez Building, it is enough to cross the street and join a network of cycle paths that connects the entire city. These buildings work on their integration with the urban fabric and what it offers; in this case, the incorporation of the park and its leafy trees to both houses and public connectivity.
MATERIALITY
A reinforced concrete beam on the façade serves to frame the access, support the covers that protect the walkway and the stairs from the sun and rain, and support the mezzanine corresponding to the second unit. The set of beams, roofs, walkways, and stairs border a green space that acts as a transition between the outside and the inside, the urban and the private.
The raw exposed concrete and without additional treatments, more than that of its formwork, in combination with the brick used in different ways, resulting in a stripped-down and simple aesthetic. A staircase and a metal walkway are thought of as attached, subtle and light elements that contrast in texture and expressiveness with the materials that make up the structure. This language, which seeks the expression of each material as such, is a constant in the studio’s work, questioning mannerisms and trying to make each element justify itself.
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