Casa Mendoza

Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Franklin 684 building

Casa Mendoza

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Firm

la base studio

Type

Residential › Private House

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2022

SIZE

1000 sqft - 3000 sqft

BUDGET

Unknown

Arriving to Casa Mendoza is at least, a challenge.
Its location is within a megalopolis, such as the City of Buenos Aires in Argentina. At the meeting point of a urban grid of squares and an elevated railway infrastructure. The streets, instead of crossing the tracks, end up on them, with green slopes.
Located on the corner of a busy street and a dead end street, the cosmopolitan and the neighborhood coexist on its sides.

It is a very exposed house, which is seen both on foot and at the speed of a car or a bicycle, raising comments for or against but never warm.
An example of this is that during confinement due to the pandemic, the house was the subject of a thread of tweets, where freely, all participants gave their opinion, without any hesitation.
Ref: Twitter: “the most beautiful house in the neighborhood”

The users of the house are the same architects who designed it. A couple with 3 children together and many pets. Overpopulated and with intense and constant use.

The house already existed, it was the work of a Civil Engineer, from the mid-1970s.
A house where the structure was hidden in the walls that closed it. Traditional masonry walls, with controlled windows.
It was decided to respect only the well-made reinforced concrete structure: columns, beams and slabs. But then, everything was transformed. Demolishing a service sector that touched the neighboring party wall, the house became excent. Added a level, the underground.

From the outside, the house is surrounded by a 2-inch-thick solid wood fence. The material is repeated on all the sides of the prism on the 1st floor in the form of a solid wood lattice, except for the façade that overlooks Superi street, that has heavy traffic almost every hour. Here, a Portuguese tile cladding was chosen, which according to the manufacturers, is a remnant of the Lisbon underground project of Arch. Alvaro Siza.

A compact house, which is developed on 3 levels: basement, ground floor and first floor.
Each level has a different relationship with the landscape.
The underground is accompanied throughout its development by a Patio at half level, its mirror-coated walls reflect the proposed shade vegetation, such as ferns and a Japanese cherry tree.
The ground floor is in frank relationship with the surrounding garden. Each sector has a specific use, such as access, expansion to eat outside, or use of the pool. The interior-exterior relationship is blurred, all the enclosures on this floor are glazed and openable, the original structure of the house is exposed.
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 upper floor is the most secluded of all. It sought to generate a protected environment of sights and sounds. That is why the rooms have a private patio, common for the 3 bedrooms, which is the transition between the hustle and bustle of the street and the use of resting. It is an abstraction of the context, an idealization of the nature, a contained universe. With colorful species, very changeable according to the seasons, and of great ornamental value.
The predominant material is wood, both in the lattices already mentioned, which allow one to see outside without being seen, as well as in the walls, the floors, the equipment, the steps of the main staircase.
Almost like a nest or a basket, which allows sunlight and wind to pass through, but also protects it from direct contact with the surroundings.
That is the secret of the exterior image of "no windows" on this level, the house is completely glazed in its enclosures here too, but it has sieves or layers of visual, thermal and sound protection. In turn, between the lattices and the windows, vegetation is planted that helps isolate the house at night, when the interior lighting makes the views vulnerable.
The opposition of exposure and protection is the common thread of the entire project.

All the m2 of the house are used, not having circulations or corridors, and taking advantage of the arrivals of the stairs for the appearance of semi-private common spaces, such as the intimate living room on the upper floor. Or like the study in the basement.
They are few m2, well distributed and 100% used.

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Architects: Arq. Nicolás tovo and Arq. Teresa Sarmiento.

Collaborators: Cecilia Huberman, Sol Barcan, Lilian Kartashian and Camila Moncarz.

Photography: Cristóbal Palma.

Furniture: La Base Studio

Landscape: Par Estudio.

Equipment: Helmut Muebles, Huup Iluminación and Awanay Rugs.

Art: Luna Paiva, Alejo Musich, Michelle Dabul, Nahuel Vecino and Lobo Velar.