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Amancio Williams THE HOUSE OVER THE BROOK, MAR DEL PLATA
We publish this extraordinary work of architecture,
designed in 1943 by the Argentinian master for his
musician father. The great protagonist of the South
American modern movement managed with this building
to express spatial, technical and formal quality, making
it certainly one of the most signicant achievements
of its time
Text Daniel Tiozzo

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The true architect considers the degenerate

period in which art consisted in the imitation
of earlier works to be a thing of the past.
Here instead begins the period in which
the new has to be created, where creation
can count on magnicent means of selfexpression. This is how Amancio Williams
dened the meaning of his profession and the
leitmotiv of his projects. Throughout a long
career, which won him numerous honours,
Williams (who was born in Buenos Aires,
Argentina in 1913 and died there in 1989)
undertook the design of numerous projects,
but built only a few.
His most important built work is the House
over the Brook, designed for his composer
father. It includes a small service pavilion
nearby to accommodate household servants.
Both buildings, situated in a park and
not far apart, were designed in 1943.
So one might reasonably have expected
them to be compositionally and guratively
similar. Instead, the two designs differ
enormously. Close examination reveals the
richness of their composition, a quality that
distinguishes all of Williams architecture.
His approach belongs to a rare and unusual
sphere of architectural design, founded on
continual contrasts and an antithetical logic
Pages 70-71: the House
over the Brook. This page,
top: in the ground plan
of the site inside Pereyra
Iraola Park can be noted,
left, the House over the
Brook and its annexes,
and right, the House in
the Park, designed in the
same period by Williams
for his brother but never

built; below: the service

pavilions inner court has
a centrally positioned
washtub. In line with Le
Corbusiers impressions
of the Charterhouse of
Ema, the courtyard is a
meditative space, with
the washtub representing
the well

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that gave rise to surprising and absolutely

unique achievements.
Is it not a contradiction and at the same
time a remarkable solution, to locate a
house the epitome of stability above the
perpetual movement of a stream? The House
over the Brook complex was built on a prime
site, in the middle of the Pereyra Iraola Park,
in Mar del Plata.
A glance at the ground plan shows the
humility with which Williams approaches his
context. He seeks and nds a spot on which
his building will cause the least possible
disturbance to the dense vegetation that
will host it. Thus the house is built over the
stream, which becomes an integral part of
the design by generating fresh dynamics on
a site no longer cut in two. The pure forms
of the construction reject any attempt to
simply blend into the natural landscape,
yet maintain a close dialogue with the
surroundings.
Sufce to note the houses attachment
to the ground. The distancing from nature
to reach the man-made construction is
gradual, achieved by using materials that
require an increasingly sophisticated level
of processing. This graduality accompanies
and introduces us inside the house. That
said, the uniqueness of this home resides in
the bridge structure that makes it straddle
the stream, thus uniting the two halves of
the site while accommodating the building
at the same time. Williams designed an
innovative frame in reinforced concrete, with
a slender arch and thin vertical partitions
to support the oor slab and parapet. In this
case, the slab and the arch work together
structurally. Moreover, the parapet becomes
an active part of the structure, inuenced
by different projects designed for bridges by
Robert Maillart in the 1930s. It also helps
to emphasise the plasticity of the volumes
All drawings and photos
Amancio Williams Archive

This page, from top: view,

elevation and plan of the
service pavilion near the
House over the Brook.
The elevation shows
the emphasis Williams
placed on the two vaults
forming the roof over the
bedrooms, and his rm

intention to prevent the

annexe from presiding
over the park by
minimising the number
of eye-level windows.
The plan claries the
courtyards role as a
connective and typal
element

Da/From AmancioWilliams, a cura di/edited by Jorge Silvetti, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Rizzoli, New York 1987

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The House on the Brook in

Mar del Plata (Argentina) was
designed by Amancio Williams
in 1943, in collaboration
with Delna Glvez de
Williams, and built between
1943 and 1945. Today
unfortunately the work is in

a woeful state of disrepair

and totally abandoned. Most
of Williams work documents
are preserved in the Amancio
Williams Archive, Buenos
Aires, managed by his son
Claudio.
www.amanciowilliams.com

Opposite page: entrance

area of the House over
the Brook. For a rened
look, Williams mixed the
concrete for the walls with
local pebbles, furthering the
aesthetic relationship with
the natural surroundings.
This page, from top
right: plans of the roof,
rst oor and entry level

Photo centre: the bridge

structure brings out the
sculptural character of
the reinforced concrete.
Supported by vertical
partitions, the at slab
oor of the house sits on
the tangent of the curved
element, giving static and
formal distinction to the
two parts

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and the lightness of the project as a whole,

despite the use of bare concrete. Williams,
who analysed concrete both chemically and
by hammer tests, loved the material for being
able to express his free-standing forms. They
are pure forms that he did not hesitate to
enrich with relevant details in plain sight,
yet in no way did they prevent the house
from being perceived in its entirety as a
pure volume. The detail is not decoration,
but rather the demonstration of perfect and
innovative technique.
The interior of the house responds to the
same logic. Its furniture and nishes are
carefully conceived, but deliberately designed
to not outshine the master plan. The bridgestructure is developed symmetrically to the
axis of the stream, whereas the plan of the
house is developed in the opposite direction.
The elementary plan is none other than a
typological reinterpretation of the so-called
chorizo house, deeply rooted in the history
and culture of the pampas. Here again,
antithetical elements contrast with one
another: advanced technology in the choice
of structure, and tradition in the local type of
house adopted. If a Pompeiian house consists
of a central patio with rooms opening off it,
the chorizo alters that typology by means of
a simple division line over the centre. Thus a
tripartite plan is obtained: a row of bedrooms,
a connecting gallery and an open space
(the patio). This same tripartition is clearly
present in the House over the Brook.
By breaking down the plan, which rests
on the bridge structure, it is easy to observe
that the row of rooms lies on one side, and on
the other we nd a completely unied space
that projects outward, accompanied by a
ribbon window all along the perimeter, which
interprets the patio idea. In the middle,
acting as a gallery, are the stairs and the
corridor to the bedrooms. It is interesting to
note how Williams handles the roof slab by
adopting a construction technique that was
unusual for the time. The reinforced-concrete
slab has a raised edge, inside which rests a
oating pavement that sits on small masonry
piers. On top of it, he positioned objects
from the skylights to the water tank in a
composition that seems to bear comparison
with the purist painting of Le Corbusier, all
the while perfectly responding to the strictest
technical and functional necessities.
Afnities between the Swiss master
and Williams are also noticeable in the
service pavilion. This small outbuilding is
a concentration of all sorts of information
that helps us to understand and appreciate
the Argentinian architects compositional
thinking.
The pavilion stands next to the entrance to
the property. In fact, after entering through
a two-winged gate designed personally by
Williams and reminiscent of those used
in farms scattered across the pampas, we
immediately see the part occupied by the
garage on the right. From here, a pathway,

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Above: cross-section
of the living quarters.
Below: cross-section of the
ground-level attachment

Williams made hundreds

of drawings for the
design of the House over
the Brook and directed
its construction in
person, so as to dene
all details meticulously.
In fact, the built version
differs from his design by
a mere 0.5 cm

Opposite page, above:

view of one of the two
side entrances. Below:
longitudinal section.
The house has very precise
proportions in plan and
in section it is formed
of two paired golden
rectangles. The curvature
of the bridges arch mirrors
the brooks sloping banks

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Top: the living area.

Above: the staircase from
ground level leads to the
living level of the house.
Regarding his choice
of material, Williams
said, For the rst time,

a construction material,
reinforced concrete, can
be used without the need
for masking or cladding,
which is equivalent to
constructing without
giving a false impression

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wide enough for a car, bends to the right and

leads to the master building. First however,
in the midst of the dense vegetation, the
outbuilding can be seen in its entirety.
This pavilion was designed to contain
the garage and accommodate the owners
domestic staff, thus dening a functional
programme that to all effects envisaged
another home, except that here the spaces

are minimal. The kitchen is divided from the

bedrooms by an open-air courtyard, a patio,
an important space serving as a hub in the
economy of walking routes and domestic life
of the small residence. In the patio, a washtub
helps to give size to the layout. Basically,
there are three elements here: the whiteplastered volume of the two bedrooms; the
curved, natural stone wall, hooked at either
end to enclose the kitchen on one side and the
garage on the other; and the void of the patio
inbetween.
The white volume contains two rooms
of equal size, on either side of a central
axis. Dividing them in the middle are the
entrance hall and the bathroom. The plan is
not a regular one, but takes up the form of a
circumference sector lopped off at its point by
another circumference sector. The peculiarity
of this small volume is its roof, which brings
us back to the association with Le Corbusier,
his studies of low vaults and in particular, his
sketch called Ma Maison. Williams borrowed
this example to build the roof using two
reinforced concrete vaults, prefabricated
according to the methods advocated by the
French engineer Eugne Freyssinet, in
positions corresponding to the two bedrooms.
Inside, the rooms are lit mostly from above,
through the aperture created between the
vault and the perimeter wall.
Once again the result produces excellent
plasticity, where Williams displays is capacity
to seize the potential of a construction
technique combined with an admirable
command of composition. Maintained
throughout his long career, that talent enabled
him to build other examples of rare beauty.

Top and above: detail of

a technical element and
general view of the at
roof. Using a construction
technique that was
unusual for the time,

Page 80-81: the ascent

to the living quarters
is a gradual, ritual
passage from the
shadowy underbrush
to the conquest of light

Williams placed a raised

pavement distanced by
small masonry blocks
on top of the reinforced
concrete slab

Upstairs, the lofty position

close to the treetops
gives the impression of
being higher up than one
actually is

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