Quincho Bialet

QUINCHO BIALET

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Project info

Name: Quincho Bialet
Authors: Balsa Crosetto Piazzi (Juan Manuel Balsa, Rocío Crosetto Brizzio & Leandro Piazzi) associated with Diego Avendaño
Location: Bialet Massé, Córdoba, Argentina.
Year: 2022
Photos: Marcos Guiponi & Santiago Victorio Ruiz
Structural Engineer: Edgar Moran

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Brief project description

Quincho Bialet is a project linked with ones of the most popular rites in Argentina: the barbecue.

The site is located in between the Lake San Roque and the hills. It is conceived as a space in between this natural ecosystem.

The Quincho is mainly a roof. It is a space of protection from the rain and the sun. Our major intention here was to create a continuous roof, with enough space and hierarchy to host the rite of large meals and reunions around a table. The slab is supported by the brick walls on both sides, which host small areas of restrooms and deposits that serve the main space of the barbecue rite. Towards the interior, the brick walls host large spaces for grill.

From a material perspective, Quincho is a concrete, non-speculative architecture that emerges as a technical result of the availability of resources and local craftsmanship. Walls of cut and sun-dried clay bricks and a low-cost, zero-maintenance roof of exposed prefabricated beams allow the roof to function as a large gutter capable of returning rainwater to the ground.

The reduction of details to the minimum, as well as the "unfinished" condition of the project, respond to an attitude of responsibility and common sense to face the economic and political challenges that the region has been facing in the last decades.

The trees are the backstage of the large room where the rite takes place; functioning as a natural enclosure for the Quincho and integrating it kindly with the natural ecosystem that surrounds it and makes it part of it.

Finally, the project has the aura of a shelter, a space for encounter with and within nature of the Monte of Cordoba.