MeCa House / AtelierM

Designer: AtelierM
Area: 300 m²
Year: 2022
Photographs: Matías Mosquera
Design: Matías Mosquera, Camila Gianicolo, Marcelo Vita
Landscape: Ayerza & Samaría
Structures: Pedro Gea
City: Buenos Aires
Country: Argentina

MeCa House, a residential project by AtelierM, is grounded in sustenance and reimagines the act of inhabiting through the spatial and symbolic centrality of food. The design positions a large kitchen at the geographic and conceptual heart of the house, integrating it with a surrounding pond, orchard, and garden-living-kitchen axis. Developed as an open yet private structure, MeCa uses passive ventilation, deep eaves, and a dual material system of concrete and charred wood to regulate light and temperature across seasons. Influenced by modernist architects like Le Corbusier and Kahn, the project blends ecological awareness, material experimentation, and daily ritual into a continuous loop of natural interaction and domestic life.

A boundary can be so much more than a wall separating inside and outside. By expanding and exploring those thresholds, the relationship between interior and exterior becomes beautifully blurred. That was our pursuit with MeCa House, and achieving that diffused boundary was immensely rewarding.
Interview with Matias Mosquera of AtelierM

MeCa is a residential experiment shaped around the idea of sustenance. This theme reflects the clients’ lifestyle and identity. The food cycle defined the spatial configuration of the project, beginning with the house’s core: a large kitchen located at its center, represented by an expansive countertop. This space serves as the functional and symbolic heart where cooking, nurturing, and sharing take place.

Though positioned at the center of the home, the kitchen remains surrounded by natural elements—light, vegetation, and food. To the south, a pond offers seasonal cooling and connects the interior to aromatic flora. To the east lies an accessible orchard, directly linked to the cooking area. To the north, the garden-living-kitchen axis is fully articulated.

Despite its central location, the kitchen gives the impression of being outdoors. Architectural strategies—such as floor-to-ceiling windows that slide behind concrete walls—blur the interior-exterior boundary. These structural elements support the upper volume, which contains private spaces suspended among the ash tree canopy, reinforcing the integration between nature and architecture.

Vegetation dominates the exterior and continues to the rooftop, reinforcing the project’s conceptual coherence. The preservation of existing ash trees was a key design directive. These trees, often associated with mythological flows of energy and longevity, become a symbolic structure for the project’s exploration of life cycles.

On the ground level, visual continuity with the landscape is maintained throughout, even within a residential setting. Planes of sight are intentionally curated. Where privacy is needed, filters and dense vegetation allow for light and airflow without compromising seclusion.

MeCa creates a space that is simultaneously open and enclosed. Designed for environmental efficiency, the house uses natural ventilation and daylighting strategies. Eaves serve as seasonal moderators—blocking the sun in summer and admitting light in winter. While closed off to the south, the house opens to the north. Materiality is central to its climate responsiveness.

The ground floor is constructed of concrete, enabling wide spans that facilitate visual expansion from the kitchen outward. The upper floor volume is clad in charred wood, using the Shou Sugi Ban technique. This finish offers resistance to insects, water, and fire, while forming a dark, monolithic frame for the views. At night, the wood merges with the sky, enhancing a subdued and reflective lighting experience on the lower floor.

This contrast between the dark ceiling and the external sunlight creates a calm, diffuse light throughout the ground floor, encouraging a tranquil atmosphere. Upstairs, among the ash tree canopies, the use of kiri wood for internal wall cladding adds scent, texture, and warmth to the private rooms.

At the rooftop, the concept reaches its peak: an urban garden embedded within the ash treetops. This planted terrace expands the living environment into a space where biodiversity thrives. The house becomes interactive not through technological means but through natural life—caterpillars transforming into butterflies, bees moving through flowers, and a regenerative water system looping through rain, irrigation, pool, and filtration.

While the design reflects influences from modern architects such as Le Corbusier and Kahn through clean lines and functional logic, its value lies in constructive experimentation and a reinterpretation of dwelling through nutrition. MeCa embodies a cycle of tradition, transformation, and continuous renewal—the foundation of its architectural richness.