Castaños House is a project designed by Arch. Ekaterina Künzel and Arch. María Belén García Bottazzini. The house is designed for a plot inside a gated community recently launched in Nordelta, an urban development that gathers over twenty communities and is located in the Tigre district, 23km away from the city of Buenos Aires. The plot surface is 500 sqm, being 16m wide and 32m deep. The building regulations of the community request a 3-meter setback from the sides, a 5-meter setback from the front line and a 10-meter setback from the rear line. Photography by Daniela Mac Adden

The client is a young couple (Belen, co-author of this project, and Martin) who are looking forward to growing their family together.
The decision was to work out a house of three bedrooms, a kitchen and dinning room that integrate with the social spaces, a wide semi-covered area that holds the grill, a fireplace inside the social area, a swimming pool, a semi-covered space to keep two cars, the main bedroom, in-suite with a dressing room, and the second and third bedrooms that share the bathroom. From the beginning it was important to prioritize the connections between spaces, in order to enhance social life and gathering activities.
Regarding the esthetic requirements, the couple was interested in the use of bare concrete combined with black-color elements for the exterior and common spaces, whilst for the bedrooms they were looking for a more traditional profile, with plastered walls and wooden floors.
The project strategy consisted on breaking down the total volume of the house, in a way that none of the façades would express the total height of the building, to avoid showing a robust object. The proportions of a two-story building inside a short plot could cause the perception of a bulky and heavy volume. We could achieve this fragmentation through the distribution of the mass, alternating the filled spaces (covered) and void spaces (semi-covered). This avoids a
compact look from the outside and instead creates an effect of permeability.

Country: Argentina
Location: Nordelta, Province of Buenos Aires
Project and management: Arch. Ekaterina Künzel and Arch. María Belén García Bottazzini
Client: Martín Socstel
Building company: Constructora Correa
Site Supervisor: Arch.Fernando Haller
Collaborators: Arch. Andrés Conde Blanco, Ariel Correa
Translation: Arch. Sofía del Mestre
Photographs: Daniela Mac Adden
Plot area: 500 sqm.
Built floor area: 236 sqm.
Year: 2019