House Impluvium / ATELIER ARCHITECTURE
Work: House Impluvium
Location: Splitting Albatros, Marina Vallarta, Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico
Architect: ARS ° ATELIER ARCHITECTURE / Alejandro Guerrero
Contributor: Benjamin Perez
Structural Calculation: Right
Steel structure: ESTRAC
Windows: ICOALUM
Contractor: Victor Manuel Torres Garcia
Photo: Andrea Soto Morfin
Land: 294 m2
Construction: 360 m2
Project Year: 2006-2007
Construction Year: 2007-2009
A commission an architect raises a number of questions of different nature, which as far as possible, a project will attempt to answer. Or is the architect who asks the questions the commission itself? In the case of a house, the questions have a high degree of specificity, with the understanding that the housing project becomes the repository in which they are - and disagreements - a family's wishes with the potential for be achieved. Our task is about building a house in Puerto Vallarta, gated residential community within the city, for a family of 5 members: father, mother, 2 girls and a boy.
Question 1 .- How do you build a house within a gated, in which the provisions of urbanization itself, would not provide acceptable relationships with the natural environment and / or built?
Facts
1 .- A field of 294 m2, with 2:1 proportion, and with the main front to the west.
2 .- The building that houses the services of a hotel, adjacent to our property from the East. Its height, layout and proximity does not guarantee the quality of the openings to such guidance.
3 .- There is an easement on the south side, for the north no easement
4 .- The climate of the place is warm all year and rainfall is very intense time.
The house may depend on the relationships that the environment offers. Thus we propose the use of one of the most effective of architecture: the courtyard. We are not interested in meeting the stylistic nostalgia through the use of a courtyard, we produce the ability to control lighting, ventilation and views through an active yard, not ornamental. We remember not only the vernacular architecture of the region, with its arcaded courtyards, but also its origins in the Roman DOMUS with his vestibulum , atrium , peristylium and impluvium . In this way the house can live in and avoid the attacks found in the environment. The main change with respect to the archetype is the transparency of the court through its glass frontage: limit or space sidelock transparent and feasible. The common courtyard space to extend vision and lead the air, while collecting rainwater through impluvium. This transformation allows the house to produce its own interior landscapes and also the yard - for its transparent limit - is this also as a cell , in form and location for the whole.
Question 2 .- What are the most important agenda items for the family?
A. - The most important time of coexistence is lunchtime, both in ordinary days as from visiting on the weekends. The kitchen and dining areas should be main public area of the house.
B. - even if the spatial continuity is an issue identified as important customers, the intimacy of the room with parents was important. This has separated the main room over the courtyard scheme using the stairs even when stored views to him.
The main entrance of the house is walking on the easement side, which allows us to situate the center of the field. The public spaces of the house floor is scheduled by the glazed courtyard, which causes prolonged leakage interior. All spaces are arranged around the courtyard, being in the west, the kitchen and dining area on the east side. The master bedroom upstairs and placed on the west facade behind a lattice that restricts the passage of excessive light, the remaining 2 bedrooms and family be also placed around the patio on the east side.
Question 3 .- What is the constructive response to the specifics of the assignment?
We decided to use load-bearing walls to the perimeter of the house and a structure defined by metal girders and columns for the interior, which allowed us to produce the inner landscapes through the idea of locking glass patio in its 4 sides. The presence of the mezzanine in the facades of the courtyard is canceled by placing a plate welded on the soul of the beams, which acts as a carrier for the glass façade, which is entirely practicable on all sides to produce effective ventilation. Thus, the structure is the defining element of both the interior and exterior of the house. The result is a home that makes its views through the interaction of its interior with natural phenomena: light, air, rain.
