Casa Hormiga

Casa hormiga is a single-family house located in in San Fernando, Zona Norte of Buenos Aires, keeping with the scale and feel of the neighborhood.

The renovation preserves the imprint of the existing house and adds a light structure. The brick façade is left uncovered, leaving the original construction visible. On top, the upper floor is dry-laid (balloon frame) with white sheet metal cladding. The street front manifests the juxtaposition of what was and what is: the new structure, in sliding folding sheet metal shutters, gives dynamism to the facade.

Benefitting from the opportunities provided by the old building, the secondary partitions were eliminated in order to dynamize the floor plan, obtain more generous spaces and bring more light into the interior of the house. From this subtraction, a courtyard was generated, provides light and a new landscape. This perforation gives visual permeability through the courtyard-gallery-garden sequence. New elements were only added when necessary, for reasons of comfort and functionality.