C&G House by Estudio Galera
C&G House is a house located in Pinamar, Argentina, designed by Estudio Galera in 2024. The project features a large workspace and a concrete box on top of several points that connect the home to the ground, combining concrete and wood design elements throughout.
Concrete Box Resting Above Street Level
Situated on a flat corner lot, C&G House stands on the boundary between two urbanized areas in northern Pinamar. An extensive tree-lined boulevard divides high-density multifamily lots from the only area permitted for single-family homes, necessitating access to be placed on the boulevard, with the residence facing east and a pedestrian passage on the shortest side.
Building code restrictions and program requirements created a brief of particular complexity. The distribution of spaces both horizontally and vertically results in a comprehensive program that incorporates expansions, garages, and the post-pandemic requirement: a large workspace. These spaces consume the maximum allowable construction area.
A descending street runs parallel to the boulevard, leading to the garages and transforming into a natural passage that spans the entire length and height of the lot. This passage generates air currents that ventilate the three levels and ensure natural lighting on all floors. Walls forming this inner street are separated from the upper floor by columns resting on walls, preventing contact between elements and generating an air pocket on the upper floor.
Due to level differences, the main floor of the house is elevated 1.50 meters from street level. This strategy, combined with vegetation and topography management, ensures privacy in various parts of the dwelling.
Raised Program Accommodation With Connections Underground
Evidently floating 3.60 meters above ground level, a box nestling the bedrooms creates the appearance of framing or hanging over the entrance. On this level, a guest room faces the pedestrian passage, and to the north, as an extension of the living and dining areas, the barbecue area finds its place.
This space is an elevated expansion of the terrain that increases the interior boundaries and spatial perception through the continuity of flooring and beams forming a pergola. An incomplete box in height shelters the bedrooms, closing off from the street and enhancing views to the north.
Large Horizontal Body On Ground Points
The house manifests as a large horizontal body resting on a few points connecting it to the ground, with a concrete box on top, closed off on its most exposed sides. The residence acts as a filter against the invasive multifamily zoning while enhancing the relationship with outdoor living.
The interior incorporates concrete and wood design elements throughout while emphasizing natural lighting. The interplay between solid and void extends across the minimum square meters, focusing on maximizing the usability of the entire surface and the feeling of the space beyond defined boundaries. A large window illuminates the work area, providing a visual connection with the outdoors. Openings bring in light to the living and dining areas, forming a continuum between spaces and the aforementioned barbecue area, expanded toward a balcony.
The bathrooms serve as intermediate spaces, with openings overlooking the patio and nearby balcony generating an abstract prism connecting both sides to the exterior.
Floors function as horizontal connections and are treated uniformly to accentuate relationships with each space, supporting paths and furniture for circulation, while providing storage beneath. Decorative elements, furnishings and workstations highlighted by lighting are treated with a lighter color palette to add warmth throughout the house.
The relationship with the street enhances the experience of other openings throughout the house, generating a dialogue with the elements of light and nature. Since views gradually become absorbed into a confined space, internal aspects are revealed with changes in perspective, greatly enhancing the spatial perception throughout the entire house.
Floating volumes, cantilevered landings, light beams, and graphic elements on ceilings, floors, and walls ensure continuity between spaces, with supporting walls acting as standalone items that stand out through different materials or textures for definition and contextualization of elements.
Equipped with state-of-the-art home automation and audiovisual equipment responsive to requests from any point in the house, shaded treatments, music, temperature and projection of light, tension, and humidity distribution are managed according to location.
The interior exhibits a careful selection of elements, with furniture that responds to ergonomics, comfort, and functionality brought together with finishes that create an aesthetics beyond layers of meaning defined by time, generating a unique organic way of living and making daily life a more enjoyable experience.
Key elements were identified, highlighting the feeling of comfort for the execution of different daily life routines, suitable for healthy and pleasurable experiences, providing relief, connection, relaxation, and contemplation, that is positively enhanced through sensory stimuli.
A careful selection of images and decorative pieces are scattered across the walls to modernize over time, with the architecture altering the sense of time and the passage of time restorative toward the human body and mind.
In summary, C&G House combines natural ventilation, natural lighting, and seamless continuity that speaks of the work of nature, conjuring a balanced coexistence between humans and the environment while taking advantage of those properties to regulate the need for humans to dominate the house at all times, generating more attachments to the green areas.
An apartment building occupying a site of approximately 4000 m2 (43,056 ft2) allows sites surrounding this apartment building to emerge, ensuring new construction increases the density toward the periphery while stimulating a different occupation of the entire lot, resulting in a highly flexible building with different conditions nurturing new projects.
Photography by Diego Medina
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