ESTEÑA House / Lucas Mc Lean Arquitecto

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The proposal and architectural plan are mainly generated in 3 volumes. A public sector (living dining room kitchen pantry toilette) at the back of the lot with large windows facing the back garden and the inner courtyard. Another semi-public volume, with the guest rooms. This volume was placed on the west side of the lot and its extension is from the street to 7 meters before the public volume at the back of the lot. All the rooms have direct access to the courtyard.The interior design of the house was designed by the owner herself, Mayra Garabento, owner of the exclusive furniture brand, Casa Esteña. Name that took the house in its entirety. Casa Esteña is one of those forever homes, a fortress among green pastures to enjoy the environment and the spirit of the beach.Text description provided by the architects.The project was executed in Costa Esmeralda, a private development with 1000 ha and more than 3 km of Atlantic coast, 390 km away from the city of Buenos Aires (Barrio Golf II - Lot 438) The project was born after the analysis of the topography. The existing land was 1.5 meters below street level, being the lowest point of the dune, while the lot immediately adjacent to it had a height of 8 meters above street level.The corridor or bridge allows the sun from the west to enter the gallery through its aligned windows. This corridor functionally acts as an auditory bellow of the housing program. The project ends in the back garden with another deck and a 4 x 4-meter underground fire pit, made of quebracho, a space for meeting and cooking under the open sky. This fire pit does not interrupt the views of the lot.There is no entrance door, one opens the gate from the street and passes through a first semi-covered roof space (a garage that hides behind its wooden walls an invisible service area) and completely covered in wood, and one discovers the courtyard, the heart of the project.  A 16-meter-long pool, made of concrete and volcanic stone, accompanies and guides the user's procession through a wooden deck to the interior of the house.In fact, the lower the project, at pedestrian level, from that open courtyard, the more intimacy was generated between neighbors. The plan was intervened with a forceful landscape proposal, to fix the dune and give movement to the orthogonal architecture of the house.That is to say that the slope of the dune between two neighboring lots was an atypical feature that we decided to respect and play a leading role in. We generated a first floor with a patio typology that opens on its side to this ravine as a fourth facade of the space. We understood that it was not worth forcing the project or the lot to reach the height of implantation of the neighbor.Finally, a volume or box on the top floor for private use, where the master suite of the project is located. This volume, in graphite gray, supports the ground floor without overlapping, and bridges the distance between the public area and the semi-public area (the 7 meters difference), generating with great lightness a semi-covered gallery and an interior connecting corridor between the first-floor program (public and semi-public).The owners wanted the spirit of the project to tinge every corner with the feeling of summer and enjoyment. The main premise of the project was to break the exterior interior threshold, challenging the classic organization of a house. We decided to generate a blind facade to give it intimacy and mystery from the street. The moment the wooden gates open and the user enters, his first contact is with the exterior.The materials chosen were stone for the first floor façade, graphite-colored plaster for the upper floor, black DVH windows, wood for exterior floors and semi-covered walls, exposed concrete for ceilings and smoothed concrete for interior floors and bathroom walls. All bathrooms are illuminated by skylights.