merengue
03-11-2006, 16:50
House over the stream
Barrio Pinos de Anchorena, Mar del plata, Buenos Aires.
House: 230 m2
Proyected in 1943
finished in 1945
Today is considered one of the master works of the modern architecture. It has been published in uncountable amount of books and specialized magazines, national and international. It gave rise to extraordinary reviews of great personalities of the architecture and the art of the century XX like Le Corbusier, Max Bill, André Bloc, Kenneth Frampton, the Georges Candilis and so many others. Few years back a prestigious jury summoned by the Japanese magazine A + U, selected it, as one of best the 33 houses of century XX and was included in an extraordinary publication along with known works of great architects. Like Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Eliel Saarinen, Mies Van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wrght, Adolf Loos, Alvar Aalto etc.
This house was fundamentally conceived as a form in the space that did not annul the nature. The form is at the same time, in its totality, structure. And this structure is naked, in its authentic quality. the concrete is chemically treated. Form, structure and quality are then here a single thing.
The house is constructed in a land that comprises of a park of great beauty. the land, crossed by a stream that divides it in two, has access by a single side. The stream runs by a precious depression. The house has made the meeting of the two parts of the land and is on a main accident, where the nature arrives at its greater lyricism. There by contrast, the human work is placed.
Its structure, raised in three dimensions, is net space. In the history of the architecture it forms the first attempt of a truly three-dimensional structure that works like integral a harmonic set and not like a group of juxtaposed pieces. The curved lamina works simultaneously, by means of the vertical partitions, with the flat slab of the main plant and with the railings - beams that surround it. These railings unload the projections and take to the loads through porches and partitions to the foundations, contributing to turn aside towards the Earth the push of the curved lamina.
The interior of the house is almost completely constructed in wood plate; all this construction was made and mounted like a set in a carpentry factory, soon it was disassembled and taken to the site where was armed definitively.
Amancio Williams did not make this single work like architect but like constructor and overseer. The work consumed hundreds of blueprints, 430 days of inspection and 120 trips from Buenos Aires to Mar del Plata and back again. In this way an extraordinary precision was achieved with an error in the structure smaller to half centimeter and in the delicate pieces smaller to two millimeters. The house was constructed for the Argentine composer Alberto Williams, father of the architect.
Thursday 2 of September of 2003, an intentional fire practically destroyed the House on the stream. Almost nothing was still on. The reinforced concrete structure is only conserved nothing else. Sad destiny the one of this house. Left at the hands of the bureaucracy and the economic interests of its proprietor. In a country governed by politicians incapable to appreciate and to value the creativity of its great artists.
Barrio Pinos de Anchorena, Mar del plata, Buenos Aires.
House: 230 m2
Proyected in 1943
finished in 1945
Today is considered one of the master works of the modern architecture. It has been published in uncountable amount of books and specialized magazines, national and international. It gave rise to extraordinary reviews of great personalities of the architecture and the art of the century XX like Le Corbusier, Max Bill, André Bloc, Kenneth Frampton, the Georges Candilis and so many others. Few years back a prestigious jury summoned by the Japanese magazine A + U, selected it, as one of best the 33 houses of century XX and was included in an extraordinary publication along with known works of great architects. Like Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Eliel Saarinen, Mies Van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wrght, Adolf Loos, Alvar Aalto etc.
This house was fundamentally conceived as a form in the space that did not annul the nature. The form is at the same time, in its totality, structure. And this structure is naked, in its authentic quality. the concrete is chemically treated. Form, structure and quality are then here a single thing.
The house is constructed in a land that comprises of a park of great beauty. the land, crossed by a stream that divides it in two, has access by a single side. The stream runs by a precious depression. The house has made the meeting of the two parts of the land and is on a main accident, where the nature arrives at its greater lyricism. There by contrast, the human work is placed.
Its structure, raised in three dimensions, is net space. In the history of the architecture it forms the first attempt of a truly three-dimensional structure that works like integral a harmonic set and not like a group of juxtaposed pieces. The curved lamina works simultaneously, by means of the vertical partitions, with the flat slab of the main plant and with the railings - beams that surround it. These railings unload the projections and take to the loads through porches and partitions to the foundations, contributing to turn aside towards the Earth the push of the curved lamina.
The interior of the house is almost completely constructed in wood plate; all this construction was made and mounted like a set in a carpentry factory, soon it was disassembled and taken to the site where was armed definitively.
Amancio Williams did not make this single work like architect but like constructor and overseer. The work consumed hundreds of blueprints, 430 days of inspection and 120 trips from Buenos Aires to Mar del Plata and back again. In this way an extraordinary precision was achieved with an error in the structure smaller to half centimeter and in the delicate pieces smaller to two millimeters. The house was constructed for the Argentine composer Alberto Williams, father of the architect.
Thursday 2 of September of 2003, an intentional fire practically destroyed the House on the stream. Almost nothing was still on. The reinforced concrete structure is only conserved nothing else. Sad destiny the one of this house. Left at the hands of the bureaucracy and the economic interests of its proprietor. In a country governed by politicians incapable to appreciate and to value the creativity of its great artists.