Architects: TAM – Guillermo Elgart
Area: 220 m²
Year: 2024
Photographs: Obra Linda, Jonathan Paz
Lead Architects: Guillermo Elgart, Juan Albarenque
Design Team: Juan Icarde, Delfina Diaz, Fiorela Colautti
City: Mar del Plata
Country: Argentina
House Moro residential project designed by TAM – Guillermo Elgart in a forested terrain preserves an existing spatial void by embedding most of its mass beneath a vegetated concrete mantle and suspending a mirrored volume above. This dual gesture frames the natural topography, minimizes visual impact, and defines circulation from street to core without enclosing space. The project explores spatial continuity and material contrast, while referencing sculptural theories of absence. Through subtraction and formal restraint, the house actively organizes its surroundings without dominating them.
House Moro begins from a principle of respect toward the natural setting. The architects emphasized that the forest, the trees, and the atmosphere were present long before the project. Their intention was to inhabit this environment without erasing it—to dwell under trees, among birds, and within the shade, where wind and foliage define the acoustic and visual landscape.
The project responded to a void that already existed on the site. This was not a metaphorical absence, but a real and measurable spatial condition defined by the terrain’s natural undulations and the boundary established by mature trees. The architecture was not inserted into emptiness; it was shaped around a space already framed by nature.
The first move was to lay a continuous, wavy concrete mantle across the land, following the terrain’s curves. This structural surface was then covered in vegetation, allowing it to merge with the site. Most of the house’s program was placed underneath. In this way, the project conceals its mass and maintains the visual and spatial integrity of the original void.
To complete the composition, a reflective volume was suspended within the void. This mirrored box does not occupy the space through material weight, but through optical interaction. It multiplies views of the surrounding forest and amplifies the existing spatial conditions without obstructing them.
The two formal operations—the vegetated mantle and the floating mirrored box—frame the existing void rather than enclosing it. Their placement establishes spatial continuity from the street to the interior landscape. This arrangement creates a spatial promenade shaped by tension and perspective, leading to a primary access point located at the top of the green roof.
Under the mantle, the interior is organized around an open courtyard. This patio, protected from external views, forms the central space of the house. Around it, open-plan rooms are arranged without enclosed corridors. The configuration emphasizes continuity, both visually and spatially, while allowing light and air to penetrate deep into the structure.
A wooden volume defines the interior organization. This element separates private zones from public areas and differentiates served spaces from service ones. Its curved placement follows the edges of the concrete mantle, guiding movement and establishing a continuous relationship between interior partitions and exterior form.
The green terrace above serves both ecological and architectural roles. It restores the footprint of the building to its natural condition, allowing the roof to be read as an extension of the ground. It also protects the lower level from climate exposure, acting as thermal buffer and landscape element simultaneously.
The reflective box houses a compact guest dwelling. It includes a small living area, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. Suspended at canopy level, it offers a different mode of inhabitation—one elevated above the forest floor, in direct dialogue with the trees and filtered light of the upper foliage.
The architects refer to Jorge Oteiza’s spatial theory to articulate their design strategy. Quoting Oteiza: “The work is the active unoccupying of space through the fusion of light formal units. Space is a place, whether occupied or not. But an unoccupied place is not the void. The void is obtained; it results from a formal absence. The void is made, it does not exist a priori. The void is a construction, an achieved state, the result of an operation of subtraction that gives meaning to form.” This theoretical position underlines the project’s intention to generate meaning not through mass, but through controlled absence. The architecture aims to shape space by subtraction—removing volume, obscuring built form, and allowing what remains to become legible as void.
House Moro does not present architecture as an object, but as a system that shapes space by framing what is already present. The concrete mantle and mirrored box act not to enclose, but to expose. Through this interplay of subtraction, reflection, and embedding, the house creates a spatial structure in which the void becomes the organizing force, and the landscape retains its primacy.
Project Gallery
Project Location
Address: Buenos Aires, Mar del Plata, Argentina
Location is for general reference and may represent a city or country, not necessarily a precise address.
