The concrete mass lays half-sunken in the slope of Valle de Calamuchita, ending in a huge frame overlooking the planes, and a sudden sense of ambiguity is created, between the possibility of being in front of some environmental infrastructure, or a monument with some landscape vocation. Still, Reality comes forward quite quickly, in the guise of a program based on coexistence of structure and nature, of a terrain getting infrastructure by a holiday house program. In Casa FM, Alarcia and Ferrer get a clear control of different scales, ranging from the stories of home dwelling to higher or lower grades of opening towards the landscape.
Casa FM is split into two almost autonomous entities: a lower house establishing an intimate connection with the ground and the closest views, and an upper house opening to broader views on the lake and the surrounding slopes and mountains.
The spatial layout is clear, it opens the bedrooms towards an intermediate scale of landscape and a balanced natural lighting, and transforms the corridor into some linear scenery, regularly punctuated by patios — at one time an inhabitable part of the house and a structural component of the sculptorial built mass. the core of the entire system is the great loggia overlooking the valley, in a spatial continuity with the living room.
The idea of a piece of inhabitable landscape infrastructure, rather than an object imposing human life over nature, is consolidated by the use of materials featuring low maintenance requirements and granting a positive balance with the hosting environment. Such interaction with the ground as an orienting matrix has been sought quite often by Alarcia and Ferrer, who actually experimented this potential as a platform for a familiar interior in their Casa IA (Córdoba, 2015), developing around a large terraced living room in connection to an intimate inner garden.
- Project:
- Casa FM
- Place:
- Valle de Calamuchita, Córdoba, Argentina
- Architects:
- Joaquin Alarcia, Federico Ferrer Deheza
- Design team:
- German Serboraria (calcolo strutture), Julio Quiroz
- Completion:
- 2016