Excerpt: Two Houses Conde by Hitzig Militello Arquitectos is a project that repurposes an old building with two houses that exceed the land’s capacity through simple circulatory connections. The designers aimed to cross-distribute meters for each owner, allowing both units to rotate through the central axis of the patio in a centrifugal manner. They opted to “externalise” stairs, like sleeve bridges, to achieve the crossed connection without wasting useful meters.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] Connections: From the beginning, this project had to respond to two different voices, or two clients. Both required the same amount of square metres for their future homes.
It is perhaps the greatest achievement of this project, having understood how to complete the entire buildable volume equally for both owners and without losing the ability to have access to almost all of the terrain.
The strategy chosen was to cross-distribute the metres that corresponded to each owner so that both units rotated through the central axis of the patio in a centrifugal manner. To achieve the crossed connection of the two properties without wasting useful metres, the designers took the decision to “externalise” the stairs, like sleeve bridges connecting both units.
Volumes: The silhouette of the building is a result of the completion of the maximum buildable volume that the code of the city of Buenos Aires allows. One strategy for taking advantage of all the metres was maintaining two areas of the property formerly located, clearly manifested through its brick vaults.
The new building also recalls the old spatial organisation, positioning itself on the old tracks of the previous house patios and adapting the old layout of the ground floor to the two new homes.
Property A with a ground floor and two levels has 4 rooms, and property B of equal height has 5 rooms. Both properties are staggered so that terraces appear both in the front and in the back.
Operations: This strategy is to identify the wall as a foreign element of the structure. This operation is reflected in both facades, motivating the intention of conceiving a solid facade whose operation of openings is subtraction, exposing the structure behind.
These operations were completed by a system of fences and balconies whose folds and textures sought to manifest light and verticality throughout the development of both facades, achieving a balance of empty strips and large, solid volumes. The inner patio that organises circulations has a traditional opening treatment, making the multidirectional stairs the stars of this central space.
The greatest achievement of this project was to adapt under the tracks of the old building two houses whose volumetric ambition exceeded the capacity of the land, and with a simple strategy of circulatory connections, the designers were able to occupy the whole site for both houses.
Drawings
Images
