Small Infrastructures for an Infinite Landscape
Rural Restrooms
Ausonia, ARG
Year 2019
Photos: Juan Murua Palacios
The three galvanized boxes are located in the inner province of Córdoba, just a few kilometers from the small village Ausonia. They provide restroom services for the working men of a small-scale Argentinian milking yard. The project focuses on the inner relation between location, typology and technology.
The particular landscape of the Pampa is defined by its infinite horizon, which is interrupted by distant productive structures:warehouses, silos, machines, tanks or windmills. They act as follies, spread throughout the territory’s extension. These res- trooms are another artefact situated in the landscape, that apart from being part in the follies composition, they absorb and reflect the rural setting on their metal skin. Once they were located in place, the zinc panels reproduce the sky and the grass around, giving to this small intervention a land-scale result.
The typology is solved by the idea of eliminating both doors and windows. In other words, the plan eliminates the door and the section eliminates the windows. No doors or windows. Just a spiral moving into the interior. The plan is the outcome of a spiral-shaped archetype that replaces the door with an entrance. In the same way, the section replaces the windows with just a separation between the metal panels and the concrete floor and ceiling.
Regarding the construction of the restrooms cabins; they have been made entirely with zinc sheets, which have been folded to gain structural resistance. The zinc material was specially selected for this work, as it resists perfectly the outdoors’ condi- tions, suffers no degradation and needs no maintenance. The zinc sheets have been cut and folded leaving cero waste material behind, as they have been modulated in 4 different types of panels: A, B, C and D.
The particular landscape of the Pampa is defined by its infinite horizon, which is interrupted by distant productive structures:warehouses, silos, machines, tanks or windmills. They act as follies, spread throughout the territory’s extension. These res- trooms are another artefact situated in the landscape, that apart from being part in the follies composition, they absorb and reflect the rural setting on their metal skin. Once they were located in place, the zinc panels reproduce the sky and the grass around, giving to this small intervention a land-scale result.
The typology is solved by the idea of eliminating both doors and windows. In other words, the plan eliminates the door and the section eliminates the windows. No doors or windows. Just a spiral moving into the interior. The plan is the outcome of a spiral-shaped archetype that replaces the door with an entrance. In the same way, the section replaces the windows with just a separation between the metal panels and the concrete floor and ceiling.
Regarding the construction of the restrooms cabins; they have been made entirely with zinc sheets, which have been folded to gain structural resistance. The zinc material was specially selected for this work, as it resists perfectly the outdoors’ condi- tions, suffers no degradation and needs no maintenance. The zinc sheets have been cut and folded leaving cero waste material behind, as they have been modulated in 4 different types of panels: A, B, C and D.