2024
MCHAP
Complejo La Cortada
LOZA Arquitectura
Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina
July 2022
PRIMARY AUTHOR
Bruno Bussa (Architect), Manuel Rodríguez Solano (Architect)
CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR
Agustín Monasterio (Accountant), Luciano López (Structural Engenieer), Camila Gerlero (Architect), Mariana Trepat (Architect), Patricio Rüegger (Logistic
CLIENT
Fideicomiso La Cortada
PHOTOGRAPHER
Manuel Cucurell
OBJECTIVE
The project is articulated through a central space providing access to eight lots where each individual house is located, proposing the possibility of creating a suburban community environment with shared outdoor spaces while maintaining independence and privacy in relation to others.
The space between volumes serves as a mediator between architecture and nature, between the collective and the individual. The boundaries between this central space and the houses are materialized with a low wall supporting a green living fence, reproducing the fronts of the houses in the english neighborhood where wide streets and landscaped sidewalks blend with the gardens of the houses, blurring the lines between individual and collective.
Entirely austere, realized in brick and painted white, the houses are dispersed among the gardens with pure volumes that are perceived around their entire perimeter, but which orient their main rooms towards the north. Therefore, a neighborhood identity is constructed based on the grouping and establishment of a common language for all units.
To preserve privacy, each house directs its main living spaces towards its own courtyard, which aligns with the north, the best orientation in the Southern Hemisphere. The common spaces of the house are located on the ground floor, while the intimate sector is developed on the upper floor, opening on its longest side towards the private courtyard with glass panels, thus capturing the best orientation.
CONTEXT
La Cortada Complex is located in Fisherton, a suburban residential neighborhood to the west of the city of Rosario, whose origin dates back to the late 1800s. This neighborhood we originally intended to be inhabited by the British hierarchical staff of the Central Argentine Railway. It was conceived as an area of country estates and farms, with large exposed brick houses, free perimeters and sloping roofs in accordance with 19th-century English architecture, situated within large landscaped plots of land.
Today, the neighborhood consists of lots ranging from 1500 m2 to 2000 m2 for single-family homes (mostly high-class) with constructions that, for the most part, attempt to preserve certain formal and stylistic features, maintaining the predominance of houses with free perimeters, green fences and large trees.
In response to the accelerated growth experienced by the city towards the west and understanding that it must be compact, dense and diverse, we designed a complex of eight houses on a 1500m2 lot achieving a densification of the land greater than the prevailing one, comparable to that of the most consolidated areas of the city.
This collective housing complex is articulated through a central space, a street, designed as the heart of the complex as it serves as the entrance and meeting point for the houses.
PERFORMANCE
Cortada: "disruption of the orthogonal layout of streets. Semi-public street that extends the public frontage to the center of the block."
The project was focused on intermediate spaces, the interstitial as a mediator between the individual and the collective, promoting community life while maintaining individuality within the whole. The houses open onto this semi-public space, contributing to forming identity and achieving unity, where neighbors can exercise a certain degree of control.
Six years after designing this complex, we identified that this "dead-end" interior street (the street) is the meeting place, fulfilling informative, symbolic, and recreational functions, where people play and learn. It has a communal character; it is the place for exchange and gathering space.