Project: GPL House
Architects: Estudio BLT
Location: Mendiolaza, Argentina
Area: 1,506 sf
Photographs by: Emilia Sierra Guzman
Estudio BLT has designed the GPL house in the area known as Mendiolaza, on the outskirts of Cordoba city in Argentina. This contemporary dwelling is placed in a fast growing suburban neighborhood with its rooms oriented due north where they open towards a private garden surrounded by trees typical for the area.
How to place a house in a suburban landscape in the hills? This was the main challenge of this project, that had to be placed in a fast growing suburban neighborhood in the first undulations of the sierras, in the outskirts of Córdoba city. The development of sub-urbanization in the sierras, has the main problem of destroying the landscape and the native forest, while expanding the urban area towards natural landscape.
When facing the problem of how to stand with the architecture in the site, it was a premise to work taking profit of the topography, making sure that the new construction doesn’t interfere with the surrounding landscape, maintaining the possibility of viewing the native forest through the house at the back side of the site. To do this, we decided to bury the main parts of the house below the street level, hiding it. By doing this, we achieve an intense relation with the surrounding landscape, by generating a strong contrast between the silent geometry of the brick cubes that emerge from the green roof of the buried house, and the green native forest downhill.
The rooms of the house, all of them oriented north, fully opens to a private garden surrounded by typical trees of the sierras, while they hide themselves from the street and the south, gaining privacy for the house. Small interior courtyards, separates the rooms of the house from the contention wall, allowing crossed ventilation, that together with the green roof, climate the house in a natural way. From the street, we can only see two blind volumes. There are two main entrances, one for pedestrians, the other one for cars, that appears like two excavations descending down to the main level of the house.
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