Cariló, Partido de Pinamar, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Over the years,the studio has intervened in the renovation of the client’s house (Charlie) in Cariló -a coastal town in Buenos Aires’ Pinamar County. The residence is a brick chalet with a pitched roof built in the early 80s which has withstood inclement weather and the passage of time very well, although not so much the changes in the family composition and the variations in the ways of using the house.
The last reform centered on the exterior area towards the rear façade, a new space that had to be linked to the existing house and protected from weather changes. Although the client imagined a concrete and glass box ‘floating’ among the trees, the studio’s response was to design it as the original designer would have done, taking into account the passage of time and the evolution of materials.
Faced with the challenge of adapting a typical house of the area to new demands, the studio took gestures and imprint of the typical houses of the time but ensuring a more fluid relationship with the natural environment. Therefore, the resounding interior/exterior limit generated by the concept of ‘wall and span’ was avoided as today is incompatible with a generic user who seeks a more fluid and complex connection between architecture and nature. In this sense, the new element is light and transparent and does not contact the ground as it rests on a platform that makes it ‘levitate’ over an evergreen park. The barbecue area can open completely and becomes a bellow that links the existing house with the outside, transforming itself into a pavilion for various uses among the trees.
Charlie’s Quincho is a dialectic proposal that was worked in a contemporary way, in both technology and aesthetics. Matching in form and differentiating in materiality, it creates an interesting tension that reveals that the parts belong to not only different ‘authors’ and thoughts, but above all to different moments.
