Casa para un viñatero
This 120m2 house currently under construction in the city of San Juan, Argentina, at the foot of the Andes mountains, is the intended scene of a well-rounded second life-act, belonging to a widower and a retired engineer who is building it for his second wife as he pursues a new career as a vineyard grower.
The house is cubical and simple, rendered in cementitious stucco and painted white on the exterior and finished in plaster on the interior. The volume spans the entire width of its site as it divides what is left unoccupied into front and back yards. The interior is itself divided in two halves with spaces for socializing on the ground level and spaces for intimacy on the second level. The two floors are linked by stairs which intersect the front facade to the north unfolding it into three receding planes of glass.
To the back a continuous window connects the spaces of the ground floor to the garden, while in the front a steel-rod pergola shaped like a pillow on one side protects the kitchen from too much sunlight while double-tasking as car-port. On the other side a large reflecting pond flanks the main entry while bouncing the leaning sunlight of the midday into the house through the stair that bridges over the water, projecting on the walls and ceilings the shadows of those who move between the floors.
Sunlight and water make possible the grape-growing industry that gives impetus to this couple's life-project, quietly and unsentimentally, the proposed arrangement gives these two elements a constant presence in the house.
