Excerpt: Coihues Neighborhood, a housing project by 0.7 Arquitectura, consists of ten houses designed for both community and privacy. The homes are intended to maximize sunlight and openness while creating private green spaces. The architecture features a reinforced concrete structure with warm wooden cladding, blending solidity and openness to seamlessly integrate indoor and outdoor living.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] Coihues is a neighborhood of ten houses situated at both sides of an internal vehicular street after passing through an important entrance gate. The access of each unit from this community street is private and has its own garage and a park area with a pool. The houses are oriented alternately in order to receive the best sunlight opening towards their private parks. The units on the front line on the street invert their orientation to cover the best views but keeping the row of trees in their parks which works as a natural separation from the vehicular street.
The emplacement layout has to do with a particular perpendicular position of each house with respect to the street in order to open up the central community space and, at the same time, to improve the sunlight of the private outdoor areas. As a result of this design, it stands in a small-scale neighborhood with high quality community spaces and large areas of privacy for each unit.
The houses are developed in three variants of one unique typology that, by mirroring and alternating, avoid the monotony of the whole set. The internal functions of the houses are distributed in two levels with a public area on the ground floor which includes the living- dining room, the kitchen and an external gallery facing the park. This gallery is opened completely towards the street allowing wider use by incorporating the garages as a useful space. On the first floor it is the private area which includes the master suite and the rest of the bedrooms.
The language of the housing complex is given by a reinforced concrete structure that works as an exterior enclosure as well as an assembly of the facades. From a formal point of view, the reinforced concrete is used to generate hanging planes which lighten the impact of the material while allowing the ground floor to open towards the park and, at the same time, protect the private spaces of the first level. The facades are complemented by the use of wood as cladding, giving the entire set a greater warmth and a greater harmony with the forest environment.
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