Project: Domesticated Mountain Housing Complex
Architects: Estudio Botteri-Connell
Location: San Martin De Los Andes, Argentina
Area: 8,072 sf
Year: 2021
Photographs by: Ignacio Uranga
Domesticated Mountain Housing Complex by Estudio Botteri-Connell
Located in San Martin De Los Andes, Argentina, the Domesticated Mountain Housing Complex by Estudio Botteri-Connell is an architectural wonder that stands freely in a limited plot, blending in with the surrounding environment. The building is designed in response to the immediate environment and the scale of the landscape and the city as a whole.
The use of metallic black rock on the outside and plain white inner spaces reflects the local tradition for construction and incorporates new technologies through energy-efficient systems and rainwater storage for irrigation.
The subjective nature of the landscape –as an individual and collective construction- is a fundamental characteristic of development projects. The perception space becomes information for the architectural project when the contemporary landscape is considered an inescapable unifying component. Lefebvre, Henri (Production of Space).
Originally, the city of San Martín de los Andes, in Neuquén, Argentina, was a mountain village mainly supported by forestry development. Nowadays, it is established as one of the most prominent tourist spots in the country. Its placement nestled in the Andes mountain range has become the fundamental feature of imagining our current housing development.
Nature leads to architecture. The building stands freely in a limited plot in response both to the immediate environment as well as to the scale of the landscape and the city as a whole.
A series of morphological and material studies on part of the “landscape matter” resulted in the use of metallic black rock on the outside and plain white inner spaces. The management of scale, the angular solutions, and the small windows with no regular patterns reinforce the overall expressive concept. The building borrows from local tradition for construction and incorporates new technologies through energy-efficient systems and rainwater storage for irrigation.
Sculpting the landscape. Landscape pictures, pieces of mountain and sky, snowy mountaintops, burning fireplaces. White walls paint a shelter and home. A small stone echoing patios. Terraces high above the clouds. “Domesticated Mountains” in a landscape sculpted to be inhabited. An archetypal model blending with the image of the city, springing to the future and rooted in the past. Matter and memory are in tune with Henry Bergson. Architecture and environment form a temporal and spatial blend.
