Jaima House | Estudio Galera

Jaima is the fourth residence of a series of concrete houses built by the firm Estudio Galera in a small neighbourhood in the south of Pinamar.

A 1700-square-metre plot bordering an ‘urbanized’ forest gives the possibility of settling down in a context of pines and dunes in the shape of a small urban appendix called Constancia Neighbourhood. This peninsula of ‘domesticated’ forest is set inside an un-plotted massif on the edge of Carilo city.

In order to maximize the connection with the natural surroundings, industrialized resources –such as PVC cubes used in the slab- were incorporated. The brief focuses on devising comfortable spaces in which the rusticity of the environment becomes an asset rather than a setback.

The house finds its conceptual and argumentative principles in the Arabic tent or Jaima even though it was not expressly inspired by it. The dwelling concentrates the life of the nomadic family under a protective cover supported by metal columns -specially built for the house by the firm- that end in solid beams which work as capitals and articulate the shifts of slope on the cover. The coffered slab simplifies the structure by generating a web of beams which order the rest of the elements on the façade and plan. In the outside, the slab resembles a piece of cloth fixed to poles at varying heights generating shade and protecting the occupants from the weather, just like a jaima.

The bedrooms are nested in a half-buried box placed in an intermediate level between the social plan, which unfolds half level above it, and the ground floor –where the services as well as a flexible space are projected. Under the cover, full-height sliding glass doors open to a space connecting east and west, inside and outside and fostering uses in the shade/sunlight patio depending on the time and temperature of day. The cover is lifted, taking the rays of sunlight to the interior and reflecting the water movements from the pool on the concrete.

The residence develops into patios designed for different purposes and varying degrees of privacy. The structure and most of the house –except from specific areas such as bathrooms, kitchen and barbecue grill- propose but does not impose uses. The spaces must be flexible and accommodate to the new generations, who do not longer watch television or study in a specific room. In architecture, to understand this vagueness means to simultaneously contemplate a dialogue between concrete possibilities and future ones. The way in which society moves, forces different ways of thinking and acting: to propose instead of to impose.

Jaima House does not comprise a sole look. It is rather the result of the necessary pragmatism to generate a type of architecture that focuses on creating experiences, producing different states and using various techniques to frame and to try to ‘tame’ the environment by giving it characteristics of use and enhancing the relation between the residents and the environment.