A Concrete Bar Stretched Toward the Lagoon

On a double plot overlooking more than a hundred meters of lagoon shoreline outside Buenos Aires, a striking residence has taken form. Casa Lomadas, designed by Argentine practice Grizzo Studio, presents itself as a long, folded concrete bar perched across two constructed mounds that reorganize the site into an artificial terrain. From the outset, the project operates as a negotiation between mass and ground, with building and landscape functioning as a single continuous system.

According to design media reports, the project's central question was architectural: rather than placing a house on flat ground, the studio chose to reconstruct the site itself, forming artificial topography before laying architecture upon it.

The Logic of Two Mounds

The spatial experience of Casa Lomadas begins with its two mounds. The first starts at the street edge and widens as it extends toward the water, carrying the main approach. The second begins as a vehicular entry and garage before slipping into the garden, reappearing as a planted ramp that rises back to the house.

These mounds are more than structural supports. They carry movement, hold program, and orchestrate the full spatial sequence from arrival to the lagoon's edge. At the point where mounds meet the concrete bar, a double-height exterior void opens, housing a shallow reflecting pool that catches fragments of sky and structure.

Inside, the left mound thickens into interior space. The kitchen and dining areas sit embedded within the slope, and the ceiling lifts as the sequence reaches the living room. A gallery projecting over the lagoon marks the end of this measured progression — the horizon becomes the final wall.

Faceted Geometry as Spatial Driver

Casa Lomadas is defined by a faceted language of angled concrete planes. Walls tilt and shift, creating tension that directs attention outward. Views are framed in specific directions, and the landscape remains in constant peripheral vision. This geometry runs through every space, so the house reads as a continuous operation rather than a collection of rooms.

A suspended staircase of folded raw steel sheet cuts through this system, appearing light against the heavier concrete surfaces and landing onto a large interior planter — tying vertical movement back to the ground. Throughout the house, exposed concrete, raw steel, and stone are left visible, giving the project a consistent material character.

Upper Level: A Vantage Toward the Lagoon

On the upper floor, a living area and study extend onto a planted terrace positioned above the gallery, set up as a vantage point toward the lagoon and sunset. A bridge crosses back over the entry void, connecting to the bedrooms.

At the far end of the concrete bar, the main bedroom opens in both directions through large glazed surfaces. The en-suite bathroom extends outward to the cantilever's edge, with the bathtub positioned where the lagoon's horizon becomes part of the interior view. A perforated metal screen on the rear facade, suspended from the main structure, filters light and softens the mass of the concrete bar.

Architecture as Terrain: A Regional Lineage

Casa Lomadas participates in a trajectory of landscape-integrated architecture that runs through the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond. While modernism often sought to lift buildings off the ground, subsequent generations explored the opposite — letting architecture become terrain, or merge with it entirely.

In Argentina, the vast horizontality of the Pampas and the lagoon landscapes on the urban fringe have long offered architectural provocation. Grizzo Studio reinterprets this regional context through constructed mounds, demonstrating that how one reads the land is inseparable from how one makes space.