experiment al | residential | garden

Year: 2012.
Area: 30 m2 / 323 ft2

Subject: Interior architecture and contemporary art at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy.

The project is an intervention at the entrance of a typical Argentinean condominium, the “patio-house”. This traditional space is called “zaguán” and is formally defined as a crossing space between the street and the house without any habitability.
However in Argentinian literature J. L. Borges wrote that these spaces are the ones with the richest stories.
At the beginning of the previous century, when a well educated girl was courted by her suitor, they found themselves socializing inside the house along the company of mothers, fathers and brothers. When they finally found themselves alone in the street, the community was invasive enough to prevent any type of manifestation of affection. Between these two situations appears the “zaguán”, a place where they were allowed for a brief moment of intimacy. 
It would be visible enough for the mothers to see their daughters alone with their suitors, and it should be close enough to prevent looking from the outside to the inside of the house. 
The sounds were only a few. The high roof and the cold walls made a lot of echo. The light was weak and indirect, filtrated by colored glasses that distorted the silhouettes. The odor was mixed between the rain in the street  and the scent of lavenders in a near courtyard. 
The time was fast and slow. For the one inside it was never enough but for the outsiders it was too much. 
Under this context, the project is an experiment. A space in-between, is a mix of the inside and the outside, the private and the public, the light and the shadow, the cold and the warm, the visible and the imagined. Always filter and undefined.