The Inhabited Threshold. The Limits of Dialectics in Julio Cano Lasso’s House

Abstract

Julio Cano’s house-office in La Florida is studied in this text as a clear realization of a conception of the domestic phenomenon as a threshold that sequentially articulates the transit between public and private space. It also serves to illustrate the character of limit that architecture has as a discipline and as a mechanism of spatial production. Julio Cano Lasso’s design tactic used in this building is based on the establishment of rites of passage and the limits of dialectics that link to the history of domestic architecture ranging from the traditional Japanese house to Wright’s Usonian houses. The exemplary character of the building resides in a lay out that shows quite literally a stratification which acts as a regulator of the relationship between the exterior and the interior of the house. This condition, simultaneously, subtly modulates both the degree of privacy of each room and the conditions of permeability among them.