Casa Felicità Mare

The challenge of this project was to renovate an existing house to accommodate new ways of living, expanding it with additional constructions and establishing modes of intervention where the main continuities between all the elements are provided by the articulation of semi-covered spaces harmoniously integrated into the landscape.

The original house, a compact two-storey block set on the cliff facing the sea, was built in the 1990s when the Uruguayan town of José Ignacio, east of Punta del Este, was transforming from a fishing village into an exclusive 25-block seaside resort. The current intervention expands and opens up the house to this privileged natural environment, extending the ground floor in particular with a large semi-covered area complemented by a new pavilion, with exceptional sunset views over the fishing port.

The existing brick walls with colonial tile roofs formed a traditional tectonic volume, surrounded by several perimeter galleries. The renovation 25 years later intervenes in this dominant wall structure with a combination of new technologies: concrete structures, stone walls, pergolas and natural lapacho wood cladding that will grey over time, creating more open and filtered boundaries with variable behaviour, contained between the semi-covered plane on the ground floor and a homogeneous Jura stone floor that materialises the continuity between interior and exterior.

The project maintains the original distribution criteria, with an upper floor for the private bedroom area at street level and a ground floor with public areas and terraces linked to sports and leisure spaces. The new intervention seeks continuity with the existing structure through a slab that joins the original volume and envelops the complex with a perimeter beam like a ribbon. A system of pergolas and wooden structures complete the sun protection on the upper floor on the west side and cover the access from the street. The stone walls act as large plinths to support the land from the beach, continuing towards the opposite side as a flower bed and retaining wall.

The interior-exterior boundary is regulated by the total opening of the carpentry, creating large spaces for use in summer, when the house is occupied for parties and holidays. The links from the beach to the pool, terraces, galleries and living areas, and then to the bedroom areas on the upper floor, are conceived as gradual transitions that define very different forms of privacy, but at the same time recover in each instance a way of associating with the landscape through views and semi-covered expansions.

The project explores the opportunity to transform and expand an existing traditional construction to connect decisively with the landscape.

The addition of a modern pavilion is integrated through a large slab that extends in the form of galleries and terraces. This structural connecting element synthesises the expression of the new intervention in the complex, where orange tile roofs, wooden pergolas and shutters, and other elements are linked by this linear, pure, white piece. The edges open to views and ventilation, and the projection of shadows define both the transitions between new and existing constructions and an architecture that links exteriors and interiors to shape a unique way of living by the sea.