Casa el Patio is a residential project completed by Lucas Mc Lean. The home is located in La Esmeralda, Argentina. The project was built in Costa Esmeralda, a private enterprise with 1000 ha and more than 3km of Atlantic coast, 390 km from the City of Buenos Aires. The project reinterprets the courtyard typology. The morphology of the plan is structured around a tight and absorbing space, sheltered from strong winds and low winter temperatures.
The courtyard, protagonist on the side access, acts as a functional, auditory and visual hinge between these two areas, like the semi public architectural program that develops behind. Three bedrooms, the night rest area is located to the front, while the area of greatest social exposure is located to the back. This void of 80 m2, the heart of the project, solves the semi covered circulation between the program, and is responsible for integrating the interior – exterior doorway, thus generating a projected range of meters which do not compute as built area. The house of 160 m2 then seeks to conquer the lot, implanted in the center and occupying the highest amount of linear feet between mandatory setbacks. The front facade is translated on the dense, rustic, heavy, and opaque stone volume, which contains the pedestrian access. Once inside, the architecture becomes almost invisible, with a glazed living dining room on both sides that allows users to observe the depth of the lot and its wild vegetation.
