One Column House

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One Column House

Firm

DiA Studio

Type

Residential › Private House

SIZE

10,000 sqft - 25,000 sqft

One Column House is an extension and refurbishment for
an existing small old summer house on the shores of a Patagonian lake in
the South of Argentina.

The conditions of the existing house lack of an optimum spatial and
functional distribution that could fulfill the needs and the manners
that the summer house is being lived and experienced: the existing house
sits far away from the lake shore neglecting the most privileged views
towards the lake and its landscape, while at the same time both neighbor
houses at the sides block the vistas towards the lake since their
footprints were settled closer to the lake shore. Besides, the interior
space was characterized by a deep dark dinning/ living area with limited
relation to the outside with a deficient connection between the kitchen
and the private and public rooms. At the same time, the small size
bedrooms were inefficient to cope with the actual family growth.DiA Studio decided to incorporate a detached volume as
an extension to the existing house which grounds closer to the lake
shore and oriented towards the best landscape vistas, creating an
internal patio between the existing house and the extension volume. Thus
the new extension establishes a clear division between the public and
private areas, the old and the new. While the existing house will host
two large bedrooms, the main bathroom in the ground floor and a
secondary bedroom in the first level, all public areas will be linearly
organized within the extension volume: open kitchen, dining place and
the lounge area; all these spaces will share a wide open wooden terrace
deck facing and open to the lake shore.

The extension will be mainly constructed by a reinforced concrete
structure: a planar roof runs widely from one neighbor boundary line to
the other and is strengthened by four inverted beams that converge in
the only load bearing vertical element of the house. This column is
formed by a pair of twisted concrete shear walls performing in different
ways.

One Column House researches on the multiple performances the
architectural element of a column could achieve beyond its structural
capacity. Firstly, it is an element that marks a central place by
integrating in itself a fireplace, while articulates the program by
organizing the different functional spaces around it and orienting
site-specific vistas. At the same time, it stores the fireplace logs and
works as an infrastructural device where the rain water pipes are
embedded within the twisted shear walls while opening up the concrete
roof enabling natural zenithal light come through.