la plata, maison curutchet

La Plata is located a bumpy 2-hour train ride from Buenos Aires, during which time Ivan and I were serenaded twice and given ample opportunity to purchase candy bars, scrunchies, elbow braces, flashlight-tipped pens, anti-inflammatories. As usual, Corbusier did not disappoint. Maison Curutchet hybridizes the Villa Savoye and Mill Owners’ Building to accommodate a doctor’s house and clinic. Two pre-existing houses flank the ambiguous airy façade (in the image, foliage largely obscures the house to the left) and Corbusier opportunistically knits the structure into context by carrying dominant horizontal lines--terrace floor slab from the right and brise soleil from the left--and by stepping his building’s silhouette. Throughout the project, Maison Curutchet’s massing caters to its neighbors’ respective heights in order to maximize sun and view penetration. In reference to the park across the street (note the rich foreground green) the house is intensely layered from front to back with thickened two-dimensional planes that cede to inhabitable volumes once the façade is breached. A tree rising in the interstice behind the clinic ushers greenery into the heart of the house (well, it will in a few weeks) and intensifies the framework's complexity.