Articles by Benjamin Zapico

Green Mecano is an architecture workshop, where the main objective is the optimization of the use of steel. The projects are always articulated from a system of modules that can be connected in many ways and that grows organically according to the rhythm of life of the users.

Life in Berlin. Over the past few decades, alongside the daily rat race of real estate sharks, big investors and ongoing gentrification, a popular alternative model – the housing cooperative – has been gaining ground. The Baugruppe D2, consisting of 15 families, was fortunate enough to get hold of one of the last building plots in central Neukölln. Their task for the IFUB* was to design an ecological, friendly, yet modern house that is well integrated into the city surroundings, with plenty of greenery and both courtyard and rooftop communal spaces. Baugruppen are a popular approach in Berlin when it comes to creating new living space. Several parties join forces, pooling their common interests and finances, to build one or more houses. Baugruppen combine the advantages of a condo (privately-owned units) with those of a housing cooperative (shared-ownership of communal spaces). The beauty of this model? The future owners are involved in the process from day one and can take an active role in the project’s concept and design.

The Curved Walls House is located on the outskirts of Santiago, in the Chicureo sector. One of the client’s main requirements was that the house be as cool as possible, considering the high temperatures that are reached during the Mediterranean summer.

Near Pinamar, Partido de la Costa is formed by a series of projects and urban developments, among which is the “Costa Esmeralda” neighborhood. Surrounded by forests and coastal dunes, its longitudinal limits are the Argentinean sea to the east and National Route 11 to the west, which, among other characteristics, encourage its constant residential growth.

The project of the house of the Alférez Gorge takes its origin from the concept of a cabin and the romantic idea of a protective shelter in the middle of the forest; an isolated house seeking to resemble an object that would have been deposited on the ground, among the trees. The design of the house is developed based on 3 main points:

The Block Bond House explores an architecture removed from formal exercises and approaches a thoughtful solution of spatial and construction poetics. It constitutes a response that articulates the requirements of a young family, enhances the inherent relationships of the site, and reveals the tectonic material qualities into a piece of elegant contemporary simplicity with an expressive and warm character.

Understanding the city and its architectural values was the first step in the process to achieve a project that would adapt to the new needs of users while taking into account the most outstanding aspects of the construction methods of the Yucatan peninsula.

IWI is an architectural project that offers the user a living space that adapts to their lifestyle. It is a product developed and patented in Ecuador by the architects Juan Ruiz and Amelia Tapia. The living space is built in wood by means of digital production cut by numerical control (CNC milling), creating an industrialized product that allows its universality, mass production, and easy assembly and disassembly.

Casa Mate is located on a lot to the south of the city of Guadalajara. It is conceived as a country house in which geometry plays a fundamental role, articulating the project through a corridor with a walled central garden that seeks to be a solid generator of privacy in each one of the interior spaces.

A low-impact house on the outskirts of Asuncion very close to the Paraguay river. Understanding the biophysical aspects of the place, it seemed essential to assume a low-impact construction with friendly implantation and the smallest possible footprint in a low, humid, and floodable native forest.