Located on the outskirts of Montevideo Uruguay, this house designed by “Bercetche Estudio” shows great respect for the environment and, through a nice space distribution, takes advantage of it. Two opaque volumes separated from each other generates a permeable “in between” that gives rise to all the common activities of the house (Hall, living-room, dining-room and kitchen) and connect it with the different boundaries of the land where it was built: to the front a main street of medium traffic, to the right a children’s package, to the left a single-family house and to the bottom a glen with a leafy vegetation. For these different situations the house responds with a particular set of volumes that generates different degrees of privacy. This volumes also contains the garage, laundry and mechanical room. Only the bedrooms has standard windows, with a homogeneous distribution on the facades and aligned each other at the interior, allows a visual communication that crosses all the house.
It is an easy-to-read house, built with sustainable and economical materials, which prove that with well-manipulated basic components, an expressive and energy efficient house can be made.
Carrasco International Airport, officially known as “Aeropuerto Internacional de Carrasco General Cesareo L. Berisso,” is located 11 miles (17.7 kilometers) east of downtown Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay. With one million passengers per year, it is the only airport in the country that provides year-round international connections. As a result, it carries great symbolic value as the “front door” for many visitors to the country. With this distinction in mind, Puerta del Sur, the airport owner and operator, commissioned Rafael Viñoly Architects to expand and modernize the existing facilities with a spacious new passenger terminal to expand capacity and spur commercial growth and tourism in the region.
As a result of the need to build a new front of house (cafeteria, administration, restrooms, staff areas, etc.) and to change the circulation layout to provide for universal accessibility, the spatial perception of constricted public areas was doubled. The new building associates with the existing one in a complex manner. First, it acknowledges the primary role of the theater building, and takes from it its design guidelines: material and color, its own height and the height of its formal components, how its façade aligns, and the leading role of solid over hollow. However, this relationship is strained by opposites: the weight of the older building contrasts with a light construction that disregards massiveness while choosing planes that join together following the logic of an origami. While the former’s genetic memory features stone, the latter’s one features paper. The plot of land for the new building had been surrounded by a wall that replicated the material and the esthetics of the theater. What ensued shows a contemporary sensitivity that – as expressed by Solá-Morales – waves from resemblance to analogy.
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