Gabinete de Arquitectura, specialised in architectural design and industrial design, began in 1987 in Asunción, Paraguay. It is directed by Solano Benítez (Asunción, 1963), Gloria Cabral (São Paulo, Brazil, 1982).
Work by Gabinete de Arquitectura is intimately linked to the climatic, political and economic context of the place where it is built. In most cases, the firm uses modest materials such as stone, brick and recycled rubble that are chosen less for their technical and constructional qualities than for being economic and widely available in Paraguay.
Spaces of great height, buildings with very few apertures and the habit of adding sun-screens to open-air passages adjacent to buildings are all design devices perfectly suited to the Paraguayan climate.
The Unilever building (Villa Elisa, 2001); la Casa Las Anitas (Santañí, 2008); the children’s rehabilitation centre Teletón (Lambaré, 2010); the barbeque gazebo Quincho Tía Coral (Asunción, 2015); and the installation Breaking the Siege(winner of the Golden Lion at the 2016 Venice Biennale) show the firm’s capacity to turn pragmatic necessities into opportunities while refining novel visual languages and exploring fresh qualities for habitation. Such particularities are obtained through the experimental, expressive use of materials and the inventive ideation of structures that can be made by unskilled labour.
Work by Gabinete speaks of the virtues of handwork, patience, care, low cost, deep thought and ingeniousness. The firm pursues these values with a twofold aim to improve local living conditions in Paraguay, and to accomplish poetic outdoor surroundings protected by extraordinary membranes of openwork brick, or indoor spaces enriched with textures composed of different materials and singular volumetric shapes.