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Casa Taller Las Mercedes

Federico Cairoli

A bridge between past and present, artificial and natural.


In this short film Federico Cairoli presents the renovation project of Casa Taller designed by Lukas Fúster. In the afternoon of a sunny day the video captures the vital places of a house suspended between past and present.

The project starts by showing the pre-existing old building and its garden, the "Casa Chorizo" dating back to the 1940s. It's a typical colonial house in Paraguay, where all the rooms are aligned around a central courtyard. The intervention was carried out with a minimum budget. The architect used reclaimed and recycled materials. The exterior of the house wasn’t altered. Plaster was removed from the facade to prevent condensation. Materials belonging to the old building and the new one don’t seem too different: past and present are perfectly integrated.

The architect created a spatial continuity, both horizontally (the rooms on the ground floor are linked through an open space and a rotating wall) and vertically, between floors. He extended the height of the original house, while introducing natural light and creating a mezzanine and an access to the terrace. Interior and exterior spaces are combined in a fluid interaction. The garden in the courtyard is always the same, but its relation with the building is now different.

The result of this renovation is a building that remembers its history and renews itself with a variety of atmospheres that never existed before. The film shows this new soul of the project while light changes from morning until sunset.

Credits

Architect: Lukas Fúster
Mentioned project: Casa-Taller Las Mercedes
Project location: Asunción, Paraguay

Paraguay 2015
Duration: 2'57''