Location: Rio Paraguay 135, San Lorenzo, Paraguay
Architecture: TDA®
Architecture: Sergio Fanego, Miguel Duarte, Larissa Rojas
Collaborators: Alberto Martinez, Carlos Lara, Magali Ibarrola
Structural Design: TDA® + Enrique Granada
Structural Calculation: Enrique Granada
Construction: TDA®
Built Area: 550m2
Year of Design: 2012
Year of Construction: 2016
Photographs: Federico Cairoli
This project found us focused on freedom, understanding it in direct relation to limits. When Sergio, a road engineer contacted us to design his house, the main element to develop was the full relationship with the terrain and the first almost instinctive thought was the desire to fly.
The brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright established that new and subtle relationship with the ground that to this day attributes gravity the greatest challenge within the material call that concludes a construction.
The idea of being suspended in the air has an inexorable duality, the first being that intricate system of particularities that organizes, directs, mechanizes forces, and the second articulates said mechanism in its relationship with the ground, the landing. Starting from that reasoning, we summon matter generating an absolutely ingenious system *.
With four central pillars, we define two elements, the main body of greater volume and a transversal one in the form of wings with a controlled span. The particularity of the system is in the position of the intersection between both blocks that is emptied allowing a vertical space that builds the relationship interior Exterior.
In this way, at the intersection of both, the void also occupies the 7×7-meter module but with triple free height, capable of housing an interior garden with a pink lapacho inside.
This generates a structural dilemma, to sustain this cantilever system with a relationship of 14 meters between suspended area and only 7 meters of supported area, a constant tension system was necessary for the upper beams (post-tensioned with a total length of 21 meters). From these upper beams, by means of rigid tensioners, the slabs corresponding to the bedroom spaces of both the children and the parents’ suite are slightly supported.
At a total of 154m2 of the upper floor, taking as a reference 4,000 kilos of own weight per m2, we speak of 616,000 kg. Distributed in 4 pairs of pillars of 0.22×0.80 meters, maximum freedom with minimum occupation.
A lightweight ceramic screen organizes the visuals by establishing a subtle veil between the kitchen and the entire ground floor area.
A house that is apparently closed internally materializes in an absolute visual and spatial relationships, multiplying perceptions and literally erasing the pre-established limits.
Perhaps inhabiting the air can also be a solution to generate as much permeable soil as possible, and this makes it possible to create a diverse garden that will complete the idea of the original project.
Only the passage of time will show us the reality.
We are convinced that the result will be positive.
- That he has the capacity to imagine or invent things, combining with intelligence and skill the knowledge he possesses and the means at his disposal.
- Which has been created by man with ingenuity.