Modern House Design | AL House | Santiago | Chile | Gonzalo Mardones Arquitecto

AL’s house is located in Lo Barnechea District at Santiago’s foothills. Its volume locates like a longitudinal bar perpendicular to the street with the double purpose of facing North (Sun and better views) and allowing a big free space for the garden. The proposal consists of a barbeque gridiron – external kitchen at one end of the area in order to embrace the place.
As usual in our works, we chose a unique building material, in this case, reinforced concrete and just one finish, which was the organic texture of color from the area’s dry fields. All woodwork, windows, and floors are made of cedar wood. Interiors are entirely white in order to allow the light bounce and multiply architectural light filtering through walls and ceilings.
The roof is a relaxation place, resulting in a cedar wood deck that allows a space to be open to surrounding geography......more

RE House | Valle Escondido | Santiago | Gonzalo Mardones Arquitectos

RE House

Artevia Lafarge 2006 Award.

The place where this house is located has its own name: Valle Escondido (Hidden Valley) and this refers to its physiognomy and recognized natural elements, which make it special and unique within the Andean foothills of Santiago.
To insert a building in this landscape, where nature and its powerful topography contribute the main features, implied a real challenge.
The solution adopted, on various levels, adapts to the topography establishing the most intense connection and relationship with the environment, blocking itself off from the neighboring plots with a mural proposal with openings directed towards the best views. The façade onto the street is mainly a wall and offers protection from the sun to the West, whilst the internal façade, open onto the garden, the swimming pool and the golf course, is a composition of large concrete frames and transparent glass windows, open to the morning sun, to the light and to a garden which adds privacy.
The roof was developed like an additional floor, in the manner of an expansion area, a terrace with pool and spa, becoming simultaneously a look-out.
The materiality, the bare concrete of all the walls, beams, sills and porches, acts as a unifying element.
The section recognizes the different activities typical of the home, and the central hall, with its double height, is the place which links the different levels and rooms with the aim of framing that landscape which one felt should not be touched. Due to al this, an essential architecture was proposed, very linked to the landscape and the place, in which the formal solution is developed in relation to the spaces animated by light........more

House AJ at Vitacura | Santiago | Gonzalo Mardones Arquitectos

House AJ at Vitacura

Due to the fact that the house is located in a privileged place on the Cerro Manquehue mountain, the main idea was to use a material which would tend to become a part of that mountain: concrete with the incorporation of ochre pigments (1 x 4” pine boarding molds and boards for slabs).
The house opens onto the garden through volumes which frame the best views. Independent units form groups of rooms in such a way as to avoid invading each other. In spite of being an “L” shaped plan, the rooms do not face each other.
From a compositional point of view the house is a square separated into various volumes ordered in a very basic manner. The façades of the habitable rooms open onto the landscape and that of the services are walled and protected from the mountain by courtyards.
The decision was taken to place the house at the highest point of the site in order to obtain views over the neighboring houses of the Vitacura section of the city of Santiago......more

Tomás Apartments | Santiago| Gonzalo Mardones Arquitectos

Tomás Apartments

Silver Medal, Bienal de Miami 2009.
Shortlisted World Architecture Community Awards, 5º Cycle, 2009
Shortlisted WAN Residential Sector Awards 2009.

The Tomas Building is located in a residential neighborhood in Santiago facing the Isabel Montt plaza in the District of Vitacura.
The investment operation consists in an atypical operation; instead of selling apartments sell square meters. Each owner buy the square meters for develop by order the apartment for the program of they needs… a family favored a big terrace with plaza views and a habitable roof with a pool and views to the north hills; other owner choose a protected garden as extension for his apartment; a third owner, a single men get a small loft and this way each apartment have a different character.
With a rectangular floor plan, it consists of three complete floors and a fourth floor which is set back allowing the use of the roofs as terraces and swimming pools.
The volume of the building contains a central void which is the entrance space to the apartments from the center of the building. A space bathed in natural light from above and activated by the horizontal circulations on each level in the manner of balconies.
Seven apartments conform the building with the special condition being that they are all different, both regarding their programs and their square footage. Each apartment has at least two levels and each one is accessed through a double height space.
The building in floor and in section is a succession of inserted spaces.
The volume of the building does not recognize the limits of each apartment on the exterior. It displays itself as a composition assembled on the basis of adding different opaque planes and voids of: windows, terraces, openings, beams, etc. that talk about the interior space.
The services zones were distribute in the interior of the building being patios as the manner of cracks of light and ventilation. For the exterior appear only windows and terraces of the habitable zones of each apartment.
The only element that unifies all the apartments is the materiality and the terminations. Only one white material reinforces the idea of a unique volume. The interiors also are entirely white that permits more luminosity, reflecting the light. Doors, windows and carpentries were in cedar wood. The white and the wood were the unify elements.....more