Clusellas Ades Pulls a Vicente López House Off Its Party Walls and Lets the Garden Climb Them

Suburban Buenos Aires has a familiar plot problem. The lot sits entre medianeras, between party walls, and most houses on it press against both sides. What remains is a strip of yard at the back and a set of rooms that look out only at the front and the rear. In Casa Libertad, a 323 m² house completed in 2020 in Vicente López, Clusellas Ades does something else. Led by Mariano Clusellas, Juan Ades and Guillermina Pastormerlo, the studio pulls the house away from its boundaries and asks the walls to do a different job.

The idea is simple to state. The party walls are no longer the backs of rooms. They become green surfaces that read as a continuation of the garden soil, standing upright around the house. Everything else follows from that choice: windows on the side elevations, rooms that frame planting instead of neighbours, and a compact concrete and timber volume that sits in its plot as an object in a garden. This is the most useful move in the project, and the one other architects working on narrow suburban lots should study.

A Quiet Face to the Street

From the street the house gives little away. A brick wall and a black steel gate hold the property line, and a timber-clad upper floor rises behind bare winter branches. With the gates open, the board-formed concrete comes into view, framed by a tree trunk and palm fronds. The architecture appears in layers, a sequence of reveals instead of a single facade.

We think this restraint works. Suburban frontages tend to overperform with expressive entries and large signature openings. Here the street wall stays a wall, and the house begins only once you have passed it.

The Entry Court as a Threshold

Behind the gate is a paved court, small enough to feel like a room. Vertical timber cladding meets board-marked concrete. A flat concrete canopy shelters a recessed timber door, and a red bicycle leans on the wall beside a planted bed. The bicycle matters more than it seems. It tells you this court is for use: you arrive, park and walk in.

Inside, the entry hall lines one wall with walnut panels and turns a full glass wall toward a palm and an ivy hedge. That hedge is the first direct sign of the boundary strategy. The edge of the lot, which would normally be blind masonry, is the first thing you see when you come in.

An Object Set Back in Its Garden

The rear elevation shows the parti most clearly. A closed upper box sits over a ground floor that is almost entirely glazed, and the whole volume faces a lawn and a pool. At dusk the lower level glows and the upper volume reads as a solid lid. Two storeys are stacked with little ornament, and the distinction between enclosure above and openness below is crisp.

The setback is visible here too. Because the house does not run wall to wall, it reads in the round. That is unusual on a suburban party-wall lot, and it changes the experience of the garden. The garden is no longer a leftover space at the back of the house. The house sits within it.

A Terrace Built Around Fire

The concrete upper volume cantilevers over a covered terrace, which creates an outdoor room with a ceiling but no walls. A black conical fireplace hangs in it beside a dining table, next to tall sliding glass doors. Hedges and garden plants press in at the side. In the Argentine suburbs, where outdoor cooking and eating are central to the week, giving this space a roof and a hearth is a sensible priority.

The hanging fireplace is the one sculptural gesture in a disciplined palette. Its dark cone stands out against grey concrete and green planting, and it marks the terrace as the social centre of the house.

Living Rooms That Open to the Lawn

On the ground floor, the living space runs beneath a concrete ceiling, with a timber floor and a long window wall that slides open to the lawn and pool. A second black hanging fireplace brings the terrace language indoors. The kitchen follows the same logic: a stainless steel island faces glass, and beyond it a planted side bed of large-leaved plants gives way to the lawn.

That kitchen view is the clearest proof of the setback strategy. On a conventional party-wall lot, the side of the kitchen would be a wall or a narrow service passage. Here it looks onto a garden bed. A few metres of setback turn a utility edge into a view.

Walnut, Concrete and a Stair in Between

The interior relies on a narrow material set: raw and board-formed concrete overhead, walnut veneer on the walls and joinery, white surfaces in between. A straight timber stair rises between a white wall and a walnut panel, and a high window lights the concrete ceiling at the top. On the upper level, a long walnut wall guides you down the hallway, while a clerestory washes light over a lounge at the far end.

The detailing stays understated. Recessed wooden pulls sit flush in the walnut cabinet doors. A skylight slot opens above a corridor shelf, and a recessed bookshelf is set into a timber-clad wall. Storage is built into the thickness of the walls instead of standing as furniture, which keeps the circulation spaces clean and lets the light do the work.

Bedrooms That Frame the Boundary

Upstairs, the bedrooms keep the exposed concrete ceiling and beam, and their windows are placed with care. A bed faces a wide square opening with a timber sill, framed by palms and dense foliage. Another room has a tall black-framed window that looks toward the lawn and a neighbouring tiled roof. A corner window frames a leafy hedge while a diagonal band of sunlight crosses the wall beside it.

In these rooms the planted party walls pay off most. What would usually be a view of a neighbour's masonry becomes a field of green at eye level. The windows behave like picture frames, and the boundary they frame now belongs to the garden.

Plans and Drawings

The drawings make the strategy legible. The site plan sets the black footprint within a dense grid of suburban blocks, and the axonometric shows the two-storey volume sitting freely on its walled lot beside a rectangular pool and open lawn. The ground floor plan separates the main living volume from a service wing and places tree canopies across the garden. The upper floor is a long rectangle with the stair and a row of bedrooms.

The sections reward a closer look. The longitudinal cuts show a stepped volume and a ground floor raised on piers, and the cross section shows the house set low inside a long boundary wall. The detail section works through slab edges, wall layers, glazing and a slatted screen, which tells you the precision visible in the photographs was planned at the scale of construction.

Why This Project Matters

The party-wall lot is one of the most common housing conditions in Latin American suburbs, and it usually produces the same house: deep, dark in the middle and open only at the ends. Casa Libertad shows that a modest setback, combined with a decision to plant the boundaries instead of building against them, can give a house light and views on every side. Working with landscape designer Manuela García Faure and structural engineer Roberto Alfie, Clusellas Ades treats the edges of the lot as a design resource rather than a constraint.

The material discipline matters too. Concrete, walnut and timber are used with restraint, and the house earns its warmth through light, proportion and framed greenery instead of decoration. For anyone designing on a tight suburban plot, the lesson is direct: before filling the lot, ask what the walls around it could become.

Casa Libertad by Clusellas Ades (Mariano Clusellas, Juan Ades, Guillermina Pastormerlo), Vicente López, Argentina. Area: 323 m². Year: 2020. Photographs by Javier Agustín Rojas.

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