Casa Cosmos—so named by its owner upon seeing it standing upright on the site—is located in the foothills of the Punilla Valley, in Capilla del Monte, Province of Córdoba, Argentina. The plot borders a protected natural reserve characterized by a dense woodland of red quebrachos, black algarrobos, chañares, and aromitos—species endemic to the semi-arid region. The topography presents a pronounced east–west slope and a steep southern descent toward the reserve.
Concept
The house is conceived as a panoptic device: from a central point on the site, its geometry unfolds in response to three focal landscape vistas. To the south, the natural reserve with Las Gemelas hills as backdrop; to the northeast, Mount Uritorco; to the west, El Cajón Dam.
This decision establishes a triangular matrix typology that organizes the centrifugal disposition of the rooms around a central social space. Arranged around it are the kitchen-dining area—fully integrated with the core—alongside an en-suite bedroom and a studio. The latter are articulated through heavy walls that regulate privacy while contributing thermal mass and environmental stability.
At the core of the house, a triangular skylight filters daylight in a diffuse manner, introducing a constant reference to the diurnal cycle. As it shifts, light operates as a chronometer, measuring the passage of time.
The spatial experience evokes the atmosphere of a diaphanous cave: a heavy polyhedral promontory, hollowed out at three strategic and equivalent points. These voids, endowed with thickness, materialize as deep galleries that provide shelter and dense shade to the large openings. Complementing them, three semi-heavy expanded metal sliding shutters modulate luminosity, regulate airflow velocity, and enhance security.
The project capitalizes on the terrain’s slope to gain height in the principal spaces. A plinth absorbs the existing topographic gradient and establishes a new datum for the main floor. Within it are housed an autonomous residential unit, technical rooms, and storage areas.
Materiality
The plinth is resolved through 40 cm thick rammed stone walls, capable of retaining the earth and consolidating the new ground level. Above it, the main floor is constructed with board-formed exposed concrete walls; thermal insulation is integrated within the wall assembly of the exterior enclosures, reinforcing the building’s hygrothermal performance.
The architectural expression derives directly from its exposed materiality, rendering construction processes and local techniques explicit. The aridity of the surrounding landscape finds continuity in the exterior walls and an echo in the ascetic character of the interior spaces.
In these latitudes, light is the omnipresent material. Its choreography and chromatic variations register the hours and the cycles of the year. The house embraces this condition and offers itself to its inhabitants as a primitive artifact for “seeing” time—a device through which to enact communion with its context.
CREDITS
Design: Architect Cristián Nanzer
Technical Direction: Architect Cristián Nanzer / Architect Ricardo Tesoreiro
Collaborators: Architect Lourdes Cuadro / Architect Juan Dimuro
Structural Engineering: Engineer Edgar Morán
