INDEPENDENT PRACTICE
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2013 – 2018 > ROMERO SILVA ARQUITECTOS - Co-Founder Partner, Director & Principal ArchitecT
Before starting my own design studio I had the opportunity to work in other architecture firms (see COLLABORATIONS), where I made intellectual connections and got real feedback from theory and practice. From this natural relationship came my interest in linking academia and practice from a pragmatic and reflexive approach.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Typological corrections as a way of testing the conventional programs and activities in which designers were taught in the academia. How to expand the possibilities within the canonical archetypes? Home, office, workshop, museum, supermarket, factory, church …
FRAME OF ACTION Understanding the design project as a system that produces theoretical-thinking. This is always part of a network of major influence that gives sustenance. We call this operation “landscape” where we try to detonate new possibilities of relationship within the variables and components that create the landscape.
METHODOLOGY Each specific project from public or private clients is understood as an opportunity to test arguments and explore, in a non linear way, an open adaptative disciplinary agenda.
2013 - 2014 > HOmE IN THE CITY I - ROMERO SILVA ARQUITECTOS, SANTIAGO-CHILE
Is it possible to remodel a house by making a typological variation? That is what we explored in this project, following one rule: not to alter its exterior volume but modifying the interior and the traditional program that classically define a single-family home in the most radical way possible.
The Kitchen, dining room, study and services are arranged on the first floor and the bedrooms are arranged in the second, which was initially a series of compartmentalized enclosures, and underused attic. In our intervention the second floor was completely cleared, keeping only the primary structure of wood, trusses, a couple of pillars, and a structural wall, resulting in a wide, open-barn type space. A single floor-to-ceiling separation was made to isolate the master bedroom from the rest of the space.
The rest of the vertical parameters on the second floor were 2.4 meters high and made from panels that can be removed as the family changes. The barn type open structure was divided so that the space on the second floor could mutate and acquire various uses e.g.; beams game hanger for kids, a new play place on a bathroom’s roof. Another significant adjustment was the incorporation of natural lighting through overhead skylights and the wooden interior re-painting with a white wash as a complement to the natural lightning.
The materials and exterior volume were not touched. The only new additions were a terrace and a grill sector associated with the living room. The totality of the interior floor is wooden, including the kitchen and wet rooms. All walls are white or covered in wood, and the bathrooms clad in artisanal ceramic work.
2014 > Office IN THE CITY - ROMERO SILVA ARQUITECTOS, SANTIAGO-CHILE
This project explores three premises that are at the same time the constraints that give freedom to the proposed design strategies.
Furniture Modularly designed to facilitate at least two uses. Individual work desk that at the same time can group multiple modules to enhance conversation and enable social meetings that transcend professional matters between work teams.
Materials Only two materials utilized; a binary palette, pinewood dimensioned in natural finish, and white silk-screened glass. Floor and sky in black to dissolve the physical limits of the horizontal planes and to accentuate the wood and glass election.
Natural lighting Optimized access to natural light. Although all enclosures are located on the floor’s perimeter to allow exterior views and natural ventilation, the vertical walls can act as diffusers of natural light into the common space of the central reception.
Something else With a strategy similar to the workshop in the city project, all the suites/rooms’ walls are transformed into whiteboards for writing and organizing ideas.
2015 > workshop IN THE CITY - ROMERO SILVA ARQUITECTOS, SANTIAGO-CHILE
This project explores the different possibilities and repercussions of developing a new space; an architectural device that not only takes care of a need – a workshop for an architecture student – but also modifies the image of a space with little architectural interest: the roof of the service bedroom.
Designing a student’s work space, a typical assignment for an architecture student -a cliché already- represents an interesting challenge: how to develop a simple project using devices that broaden the space, and allow other uses such as a materials dispensary and a place to sleep, hang out and work.
Design decisions were restricted by the need to develop a blackboard interior or a surface that could be etched on completely and be made of formica slate, including the walls and furniture doors. Construction decisions were restricted by market standards and materials.
Working atop a fully occupied and operational house made us use only the existing flat roof during the construction to ensure no demolition works or other interventions in the house. It also ensured interesting views from the workshop. Only one month of construction was allowed, so all decisions were associated to dry construction operations, considerably accelerating the process. We worked with structural plywood modulations to minimize material loss and decrease the amount of work to be done onsite. The floor was made of metal and everything else of dry pinewood. large commercial standard cuts
We understand the work as a seemingly banal architectural device of minor complexity, but interesting in its possibilities and uses.
2014 > (UN) HOME IN THE HILL - ROMERO SILVA ARQUITECTOS, SANTIAGO-CHILE
It is difficult to name this project. It can be a barbecue area, a house without windows or just a place that pretends to be more active than the house where it is located; a land on the slope of a hill overlooking one Santiago’s valleys. This is why we understand the project as a device for daily activities of a family around the pool, the grill, and also for sharing with friends and family.
And we say device because the project is understood as a typological correction to what can be called a barbecue area. In other words, it is a architecture device that exists between the friction of what can be a barbecue area, a shed or a house without windows.
The project is composed and structured with three furnitures in its ‘base’, a beam on these and a roof of tiles and wooden trusses. The restriction of design was to organize its form based on classical canons of base, development and coronation. The bathroom is arranged as a separate element, amidst existing trees on the ground overlooking the valley.
The materials used are chosen using as literal reference the existing ones in the ‘villa’ or current house. These should respond to the climatic variables over time and make the tectonics of the project more interesting: clay tiles, wood and concrete.
2018 > RESTAURANT IN THE CITY: EN TU SALSA - URBAN FOOD multiplatform SYSTEM, SANTIAGO-CHILE
A red food truck of Venezuelan arepas evolves to a diner on Paseo las Palmas walkway, whith two restrictions: a red facade and a low cost of construction with the greatest possible visibility impact in a busy place. Located under a mechanical escalator and a sex-shop between a well-known bar and a hairdresser.
In the existing place, there was a store for the sale of bus tickets. It was necessary to clean the entire interior, transform it into an open kitchen –like the original food truck of this gastronomic undertaking– and design a facade that would attract attention. Space for architectural design was minimal; rather implement a subtraction operation (undo the existing one) and an image proposal.
The uses and activities that this minimal design operation could detonate were the most interesting, which is why we understood this project as part of a larger system; it is the image or facade of a food place, it is a kitchen not only related to its interior bar and the tables daily arranged outside, but also to its original truck, events, fairs, Instagram account, its website and various ads.
TYPOLOGICAL CORRECTIONS > HOUSING SERIES
Social structures have been radically modified in recent decades. Architecture has slowly begun to express part of these changes in the configuration of its programs. A good example, without a doubt, is the residential typology.
The following four interventions are intended as a single project. In them we tested an architectural operation of domesticity, recycling and transformation of the original spatial structure, which were designed between the 40s and 80s under the logic that each enclosure room was made to fulfill a unique function. Our proposal seeks to unite spaces that were previously divided. We eliminated the service areas and several walls that divided the classic compartmentalized relationship between kitchen, dining room and main living room, to achieve three objectives at the same time. First, dissolve those divisions. Second, to design a new flexible space open to receive multiple activities simultaneously. Lastly, to consolidate a space with greater spatial and visual amplitude than the ones of those housing types, allowing access to natural lighting and ventilation to a sector where there previously was none.
The materials selection and the design of the furniture are simple and precarious since they seek to enhance the objects that will allow uses and activities to be carried out dynamically between people in each space.
