Hostería María Rafaela
Located in a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, this hotel aims to accomodate passengers coming from the airport and nearby activities. The plot, surrounded by brick walls and dense vegetation, holds an old villa.
Diverse ideas emerged from the simbolic meaning of the existing house and the repetition of material, formal and chromatic characteristics of the adjacent architecture.
The hotel was built towards one of the sides of the plot, redifining a new “plaza”, a new void which acts not only as the acces to both of the buildings but also as a nexus between the new and the old. To the other side, a water surface mediates between the división Wall and the building, linking the lower level to the terrace. The water line collects all the raining water that drops from the roof adding sound to the promenade and new sensations to this outdoor enclosure.
The building can be described as an elevated solid volume composed of five rooms, trimmed in a way that all of them face north and maintain private from the street. The ground level works as a multi-purpose room and offers an inmediate relation whith the “plaza” both for its transparency and its curved playful limits.
The terrace takes advantage of the visual openess offered by the scale of its surrounings and emphasisizes the presence of an existing oak.
Due to this strong pre-existences, new dialogues are created. logics. Contradictions. The characteritics, that at first sight seem incongruent, then turn to enhance one another. The heavy rises and the air supports substance.
The curve evades the straight line and light eludes shadow. Polar materials merge, glass-brick, aluminium-wood. Thesis-antithesis.
