The architects have decided to preserve a mango tree located in the center of the lot that separates the two blocks of which the project is composed. This is a common practice of the studio, to respect the environment and especially the trees in it, as they did in their project, Caja de Tierra.
The techniques used in the construction also respect the idea of the intermediate point on which the Intermediate House is based, renewing the more conventional construction with craftsmanship. The reinforced vaults of the roof were made by cutting in half the block of compacted earth, which generated channels that function as formwork for the reinforcements, reinforced with a small amount of concrete.
La Casa Intermedia by Equipo Arquitectura. Photograph by Federico Cairoli.
La Casa Intermedia by Equipo Arquitectura. Photograph by Federico Cairoli
Description of project by Equipo de Arquitectura
Between the public and the private, the open and the closed, the inside and the outside, the mobile and the fixed, the light and the shadows, the natural and the artificial, the artisanal and the industrial, between these boundaries lies the living space of a great friend.
Architecture is a profession that mediates the needs of living with the transformation of matter. Architects become intermediaries in this will to power.
It is curious how ideas exist in an immaterial, ethereal world, but are manifested in the material, with the matter. The construction process mediates these antagonistic universes, between trial and error, between expectations and reality.
To stand on the shoulders of giants is to place oneself in the middle of the advances of the past and the development of the future, an inevitable task if we assume that Architecture is the history of continuity.
With Kahn, we learned that structural support can become functional support, which is why the entire roof of the house rests on the furniture that forms the perimeter of the site. This dual function applies to the space, where the social and the private are intermingled according to the use. The functional flexibility of the house adjusts to the permutable condition of the ways of living, where the user of the house becomes the architect of these transformations.
With the local vernacular constructions, we understood that the preferred space in a house is the in-between, a stage for receiving and sharing. Unfired earth, in the form of hand-pressed bricks, is stacked in walls, filters, and vaults to build this intermediate space, where natural ventilation crosses and blurs the boundaries between indoors and outdoors.
In the center of a 190 m2 lot, a mango tree stands between the two blocks that are physically separated, but visually connected, achieving a spatial integration from the front filter wall to the back boundary wall. A built space of 115 m2, which is transformed through filters, doors, and shutters, responds to the existenzminimum under a local, subtropical perspective.
Finding the middle ground between the industrial and the artisanal is part of the recognition of available resources, where the balance between the two produces a technological amalgam that generates alternatives to conventional construction techniques. Cutting the compacted earth block in half became the construction strategy for the reinforced vaults that make up the roof. The channels resulting from the cutting of the blocks function as formwork for the reinforcements that receive a thin load of concrete so that they work together.
These design criteria and their corresponding materialization, ranging from the manufacture of the raw material to the design of the furniture mechanism, reflect the attempt to find the synthesis between the project and its construction.
