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Architects: La Base Studio
- Area: 241 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Cristóbal Palma
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Lead Architect: Nicolás Tovo y Teresa Sarmiento
Text description provided by the architects. Arriving at Casa Mendoza is at least, a challenge. It is located in the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the convergence of an urban grid layout and an elevated railway infrastructure. The lot is located on a corner where the streets, instead of crossing the tracks, culminate in them. Green slopes create an environment where the cosmopolitan and the neighborhood coexist between a busy street and a dead-end street.
The existing house on the land, originally from the 70s, belonged to a civil engineer. It was built of a structure that coincided with the system of traditional masonry walls and enclosures with windows. Although it was chosen to respect the independent reinforced concrete structure, the project manifested a complete transformation. The house was made freestanding by demolishing a service sector that touched the neighboring party wall and a level was added: the underground.
From the outside, the house is surrounded by a two-inch thick solid wood fence. This material is repeated on all sides of the prism of the 1st floor in the form of a solid wood lattice, except on the façade that faces Superi St., a street with intense traffic, which was covered with tiles. Mendoza House is a compact house, developed on 3 levels: basement, ground floor, and first floor. Each level has a different relationship with the landscape.
The basement is accompanied by a mid-level English patio, which through its mirror-coated walls reflects the proposed shade vegetation.
The ground floor is closely related to the surrounding garden. The interior-exterior relationship is blurred. All the enclosures on this floor are glazed and practicable. The original structure of the house is exposed to convert the interior into a large semi-covered space, where the limit is the fence with the exterior or the walls of vegetation.
The upper floor is the most reserved space, being an environment protected from sights and sounds. The three rooms that compose the floor are connected through the same private patio that acts as the transition between the bustle of the street and the use of rest. It is an abstraction of the context, with colorful species and great ornamental value.
Wood is the predominant material in walls, floors, and coverings. The lattices, made of the same material, allow you to see outside without being seen. The house, despite being completely glazed, plays with sieves and layers of visual, thermal, and sound protection, incorporating vegetation. The contrast of exposure and protection is the main concept of the project.
Each square foot of the house is used, without hallways and maximizing semi-private common spaces, such as the playroom on the upper floor and the studio in the basement.
