Hasta La Ideas

Local architecture firm La Base Studio has renovated a glass and concrete home, wrapping it in a delicate privacy and shading screen on a lush site in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Known as Casa Mendoza, the 2,150-square foot (200-square metre) residence was completed in 2022 on a 3,350-square foot (330-square metre) lot at the connection of an urban grid and private neighbourhood.

The site falls at an intersection of a busy cosmopolitan street and an elevated railway infrastructure where the roads dead end into green slopes. The location exposes the home to onlookers, so the design responds to views differently between the levels.

The home was first constructed in the mid-1970s by a civil engineer, and La Base Studio demolished part of it for its current iteration.

Originally enclosed in traditional masonry walls, the team stripped the house back to its structure and preserved only the reinforced concrete slabs, columns, and beams.

The existing service space was also demolished and rebuilt underground – within a 430-square-foot (40-square metre) subterranean library and study.

The underground storey also features a half-level patio with mirror-coated walls that reflect the Japanese cherry tree and ferns above.

The ground floor – open to the garden with 360-degrees of floor-to-ceiling glazing – contains the entry, kitchen, dining space, and living room in different quadrants.

The sliding glass doors open to the garden and pool deck, blurring the interior and exterior relationship.

“These decisions reinforce the desire to convert this space into a large semi-covered space, almost as a gallery, where the true visual and physical limits are the wooden planks of the fence or the walls vegetated by native species,” the studio told Dezeen.

The kitchen walls float like wooden objects in the space, holding up marble counters and sink. Speckled granite floors are juxtaposed by white ceilings.

“All materials are shown in raw finish, without coatings or paints.”

A delicate, suspended staircase with open wooden treads rises to the upper level, which prioritizes privacy and seclusion in an environment that protects from sight and sound.

A lounge space comprises half of the floor plate, while three bedrooms and a bathroom are stacked on the other side.

Set in from the perimeter of the house, the upper story has a wraparound patio that serves as a transitional space with a light wood, lattice-like screen.

“It is an abstraction of the context, an idealisation of nature, a contained universe,” the team said. “Almost like a nest or a basket, which allows sunlight and wind to pass through, but also protects from direct contact with the surroundings.”

The bedrooms are housed in a mid-toned wooden box.

They pass from the lounge space to the patio that ends in a white tiled wall that bounces light back into the space.

Residents can see out of the upper level, but no one can see in, and vegetation planted between the glazed enclosure and the screen helps isolate the house at night.

“The opposition of exposure and protection is the common thread of the entire project.”

Other recent renovations in Buenos Aires include a modernist white house by Adamo Faiden and a 1930s brick home by Torrado Arquitectos.

The photography is by Cristóbal Palma.

Project credits:

Architecture: La Base Studio
Collaborators: Ceclia huberman, Sol Barcan, Lilian Kartashian, Camila Moncarz
Furniture: La Base Studio
Landscape: Per Estudio
Equipment: Helmut Muebles, Huup Iluminación, Awanay Rugs
Art: Luna Paiva, Amour Leopard, Michelle Dabul, Nahuel Vacino

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