Carranza Vazquez arquitectos has completed a multifamily residential building in the city of Jesús María, Córdoba, Argentina. The scheme includes four 130-square-meter housing units arranged along a north-south slope and organized into two programmatic strips.
The project is located in Jesús María, a relatively medium-scale city situated 50 km from the capital of Córdoba province in Argentina. The city is characterized by a low-density urban fabric, where the prevalence of a housing occupation logic per lot hinders the response to the high housing demand in the area. The project consists on a set of four 130-metre-squared housing units on a 420-metre-squared corner lot with a north/south slope towards the river that runs through the city.
With the aim of mitigating the impact on the natural soil and preserving the scalar relationship with the surrounding fabric, the project settles on the lot without modifying the topography, prioritising it as a design resource. This prioritisation of the topography allows for the organization of typologies into intermediate levels, gaining a covered space below ground level.
Each housing unit is organized into two programmatic strips, one housing services and vertical circulations, and the other containing common areas and bedrooms.
The intermediate levels are articulated around a covered patio that incorporates vegetation, natural lighting, and ventilation, enabling continuity between interior and exterior spaces. A series of folding panels on the facade and in the interior void allows for the management of these relationships based on the living habits of the occupants.
In this sense, the typology operates spatially and programmatically between the compartmentalized and the continuous through the panels that allow for interior reconfiguration, and between the unspecific and the specific, prioritising spaces through their equalization in terms of metrics and interior and exterior relationships.
From a technological standpoint, the work operates through the simplicity of construction processes, utilizing local technologies and deploying the minimum necessary resources and their repetition. The brick walls that divide the typologies and the interior programs are used as load-bearing structures, and the spans between these supports are covered with pure reinforced concrete slabs. Synthesising its expression reinforces its identity through exposed brick and polished slabs as the final finishing touches.
