The project is a new single-family home in Villa Real, a residential neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. It occupies a completely vacant plot on one of the area’s characteristic passageways, a recurring feature of the local urban fabric.
Two questions emerged from the site visit and the project brief. First: what happens if the experience of the ground floor extends fully to the limits of the plot? And second: if that becomes the spatial condition at ground level, what kinds of relationships can be established on the levels above?
With this in mind, the ground floor gathers the service spaces —a WC, storage and kitchen worktops— within a compact, opaque volume. That is all this level contains. This core introduces a series of dualities: it establishes a front and a rear while creating a continuous, fluid space; it creates more contained areas close to the party walls, yet also allows a large, permeable and ambiguous space to be perceived across the entire plot.
By contrast, the upper floor is conceived as a closed, suspended volume that hovers without touching the party walls, generating a particular spatial tension. The narrow gaps between this volume and the neighbouring walls become circulation routes and sources of daylight.
Inside this “box” are three bedrooms and two bathrooms —more compact, more intimate spaces that frame views towards the street and its tree canopy.
The rooftop, the final level, establishes a third relationship: one with the sky and the broader urban horizon. In this low-rise context, the party walls fall away from view. What remains is simply a floor and the open sky —a terrace that becomes an outdoor living room. The structure reinforces these ideas. The challenge was to materialise a suspended volume that detaches itself from the party walls and seems to float between them, establishing a clear sense of below and above. The strategy involved concealing the columns within the party walls and placing the main beams at roof level, spanning the full 8.60-metre width of the plot. This allows the ground-floor living–dining area to remain completely free of intermediate supports, producing a distinctive spatial tension.
