Isla del Sol House
Isla del Sol House is located in a private neighbourhood in Tigre, a suburban city 30kms north of Buenos Aires city centre. It is a city with direct access to the river and the Delta area, a place immerse in nature and a popular spot for local tourism.
Having a 23mts by 34mts size terrain, provides within the neighbourhood the distinction of a wide front and the possibility to have a larger separation from the neighbouring plots.
The assignment was a suburban house for permanent use. The client, a couple with grown children, entrusted us the task of designing a house for that time in life where the nest is starting to be empty, but the home is still the heart of family reunions.
Incorporation of green within the house, privacy, and generous outdoor spaces were some of the other requirements of this project. The owners imagined a house where nature appeared here and there along the way, bringing light and shelter to each space.
The design strategy was based on having a ground floor that takes as much area as possible, but incorporating voids as courtyards that articulate the interior functions.
The experience of green begins at the entrance of the house with a pedestrian path that leads us through the Jacarandas of the sidewalk to a large courtyard where an incipient Magnolia characterizes the space.
The search for privacy and protection from the rays of the west led us to design an approach of the house that closes its visuals to the front and opens them to the interior.
The social areas were arranged towards the back of the building in direct relation to the garden. The functioning of these areas should be fluid but independent. To accomplish this, a small patio was placed to separate the living room from the dining room, but maintaining the visual connection between them. The kitchen appears here, in direct connection to both the dining room and the grill area.
Two large galleries expand the common areas towards the garden. We chose to characterize these outdoor spaces in a different way, separating the grill area from the outdoor living area.
It was a program requirement to include within the ground floor an additional bedroom that could be autonomous to the dwelling. This space had to be flexible and should adapt to the needs of the family to be used as a bedroom, rehearsal room, playroom, guest bedroom, or even as an office and small apartment. Given this considerations, we equipped the room with its own private bathroom and kitchenette, and placed it on the front of the house, giving us the possibility of including a separate entry from the exterior.
The room was distanced from the home by a courtyard, and its visuals opened towards the front, to preserve the privacy of the house, but provided with a series of parasols it gained privacy itself, along with protection from the western sun.
The service areas were located towards the front as well, in connection with the kitchen and the side of the house that acts as a secondary access, as well as the semi-covered parking area.
All the programmatic areas of the ground floor are combined in a single space, a large hall that articulates all the circulatory flows of the house and leads us through the open staircase to the upper floor.
It was decided to limit the use of the upper floor to the couple's intimacy.
It was required to have two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Both bedrooms were located at the ends of the floor, turning their views towards the back of the house and expand to two large terraces. The rooms were closed to towards the street and placed with a double wall to provide thermal insulation.
As for the aesthetics of the project, the use of noble, low-maintenance materials was sought. The project is synthesized in the use of concrete as a structural and aesthetic material. The client's concern about the warmth of the space led us to use wood both in the exterior and interior. Incense wood floors were installed and the same wood was chosen for the exterior paneling.
The windows were designed with hermetic double glazing systems to guarantee thermal and acoustic tightness. The openings were studied room by room to guarantee cross ventilation in each room.
As for the general volumetry, the project expresses its internal programmatic organization. The floor plan is generated from the juxtaposition of programmatic strips within an orthogonal grid. The displacement of the strips and the dematerialization of their walls gave way to the different courtyards that articulate the project.
The swimming pool and the solarium complete the assembly by taking the last strip of land. From the front, a beam recomposes the façade and together with the wooden sunshades, they finish composing the entrance courtyard.
From the very beginning, Casa Isla del Sol was conceived as a bond between the surrounding green and the warmth of a home. Designed to both being cozy for the daily use of the couple and to accommodate the whole family on special occasions, with its wide and luminous rooms but, at the same time, sheltered from the outside visuals.
