BILBAO | LOPEZ Lifts a Board-Formed Concrete Box over a Brick Wall and a Glazed Ground Floor in City Bell

Gated suburbs on the edge of Argentine cities are rarely where you go looking for architectural restraint. Bell House, completed in 2023 by BILBAO | LOPEZ, the practice of Federico Jorge Bilbao and Nicolás López, sits in one of these communities in City Bell, on the outskirts of La Plata. Its surroundings are still settling into their final form, part rural periphery and part consolidating subdivision. The 290 m² single-family house occupies an irregular corner lot ringed by a dense grove of eucalyptus trees that were there long before the house.

The interesting part is the clear division of labour between materials. A grey brick wall handles the street and the neighbours. A board-formed concrete volume floats above and handles the bedrooms. Between and behind them, a glazed ground floor opens completely to the garden and pool. The architects name the existing trees as a main driver of the design, and the house reads less as an object placed among them than as a set of edges calibrated to them: hard where the lot meets the public, transparent where it meets the grove.

A Brick Wall for the Street

From the road the house gives very little away. The grey brick wall runs along the corner, low and continuous, with the concrete box hovering behind it. A corner lot is the most exposed position in any subdivision, since two of its sides face the public. Most houses in this setting answer with a fence, a hedge and a big front window. Here the boundary is the architecture itself.

The brick is dark and matte, so it takes leaf shadows like a projection screen. Every image from the street side shows the trees writing on the wall. That is a modest pleasure, but it is a deliberate one, and it shows the eucalyptus being used as an active part of the elevation rather than as a backdrop.

Entry Under a Concrete Brim

The front door is a dark panel set into the brick, sheltered by a board-formed concrete slab that projects past the wall. The overhang compresses the approach and frames the threshold without any added ornament. The timber grain printed into the concrete underside is the only texture overhead, and it pairs well with the coursing of the brick below.

We like how little the entry tries to perform. There is no canopy object or signature gesture, only two materials meeting and a path of concrete pavers marked by moving shade. The sequence prepares you for the reversal waiting inside, where the closed wall gives way to an open garden.

Living Inside the Grove

A narrow concrete path slips along the brick wall under overhanging branches and lavender, giving the edges of the lot a garden-walk quality. The aerial views explain why the trees matter so much. Neighbouring houses line up along a strip of mature eucalyptus with open fields beyond. Bell House is tucked into this canopy rather than carved out of it.

The overhead shot also shows solar panels on the roof, a practical detail that is easy to miss from the ground. Placing them on the upper volume keeps them out of sight from the garden and the street, which suits a house that otherwise keeps its surfaces clean.

The Floating Box

On the garden side the strategy turns inside out. The upper concrete volume cantilevers over a fully glazed ground floor, and sheer white curtains are the only layer between living spaces and lawn. The weight sits on top and the lightness sits below, which inverts the usual suburban logic of solid base and lighter upper floor.

The board-formed finish keeps the box from reading as a blank slab. In strong sun the formwork lines register as fine horizontal striations, giving scale to what would otherwise be a mute mass. The curtains matter too: they let the glazed floor shift between open pavilion and soft-walled room without any change to the structure.

An L Around the Pool

Seen from across the lawn, the plan resolves into an L, with the rectangular pool tucked into its inner corner. The two arms shelter the pool from the street and turn the garden into an outdoor room bounded by architecture on two sides and by trees on the others.

This is a familiar move in courtyard housing, but it suits an irregular corner lot particularly well. The building takes the awkward street edges, and the garden gets a clean, usable geometry facing the grove.

Terrace, Grill and Steel

Where the upper volume extends past the glazed rooms, it shelters a covered terrace held up by slender dark steel columns. A built-in grill and a firewood niche anchor the space. In Argentina the asado is not a garden accessory but a social centre, and giving it a permanent, roofed place under the house treats it with the right seriousness.

The contrast between the thin steel and the heavy board-formed box is the most structurally expressive moment in the project. A bedroom window box projects from the upper floor above, framing views back toward the trees and adding a small sense of depth to the otherwise flat concrete face.

A Timber Kitchen in a Concrete Shell

Inside, the palette warms considerably. The kitchen is organised as a timber-clad block with full-height cabinet doors, a black stone island and a matching backsplash. A narrow aisle runs between the tall storage wall and the cooktop niche, lit from a side window, while the island faces the curtained glazing and the garden.

Treating the kitchen as a piece of joinery, rather than as a series of fitted units, keeps the open ground floor legible. The timber reads as furniture within the shell, and the dark stone ties back to the brick outside. Interior design is credited to Daniela López.

Plans and Drawings

The plans confirm the logic visible in the photographs. The ground floor lines up living, dining and kitchen in a single linear sequence, with a suite at one end, the pool beside the glazing and three parking bays toward the street. The upper floor is compact: two bedrooms, a bathroom and a patio, all held within the concrete volume.

The sections and elevations show how the brick wall and the raised volume do separate jobs, one closing and one floating. The axonometrics, drawn with and without the upper roof, make the L clear and reveal a small roof opening that brings light into the upper level. Timber decks step down the gently sloping site toward the sunken pool.

Why This Project Matters

Gated-community houses in Latin America often fall back on either defensive bulk or showroom glass. Bell House shows that the two impulses can be split and assigned to different parts of the same building. Brick takes privacy, concrete takes the private rooms, and glass takes the garden. Each material has a single, readable role, and the result is calmer than most of its neighbours.

It is also a useful example of letting an existing landscape set the terms. The architects did not clear the lot and plant a lawn with a few specimen trees; they kept the eucalyptus grove and organised the house around its shade, light and views. As peri-urban subdivisions keep spreading around cities like La Plata, that attitude toward what is already on a site is worth more than any formal flourish.

Bell House by BILBAO | LOPEZ (Federico Jorge Bilbao and Nicolás López), City Bell, Argentina. Area: 290 m². Completed: 2023. Photography: Luis Barandiaran.

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