This House in Buenos Aires Now Encloses a Small Jungle After Some Clever Carving
Built at the turn of the 20th century, Casa Leiva by local firm Giusto Van Campenhout features a central courtyard with a classical oculus rendered in workaday concrete.
Built at the turn of the 20th century, Casa Leiva by local firm Giusto Van Campenhout features a central courtyard with a classical oculus rendered in workaday concrete.
Patricio "Pato" Martinez discovered his new house next to a dilapidated industrial building on a leafy street in Chacarita, the neighborhood du jour for young Buenos Aires creatives. The slightly shabby "casa chorizo" (a historical style characterized by outdoor hallways) still had its original early-20th-century details.
And shopworn as it looked, the single-story structure was solid—plus, at 1,800 square feet, the lot was unusually large. Pato took the leap, bought the building, and called on his old friend Santiago Giusto, who runs a Brussels- and Buenos Aires–based architecture firm with his business partner, Nelson Van Campenhout, to renovate it. For Giusto, it was a chance to update a distinctly Argentinean building as his first residential commission in his home country.
"The first stage of the project was to understand what the function of the existing structure would be. How could we work with it and give it new meaning?"
—Santiago Giusta, architect
See the full story on Dwell.com: This House in Buenos Aires Now Encloses a Small Jungle After Some Clever Carving
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