Estudio Planta Terraces a Buenos Aires Warehouse into a Moroccan-Inspired Self-Service Restaurant

Tetuán Moroccan Brasero sits in a former warehouse behind a small shopfront in Palermo Viejo, Buenos Aires. Estudio Planta (credited in English as Floor Plan) completed the 250 m² renovation in 2017 for cousins Juan Martín Migueres and Nicolás Wolowelski, the duo behind Benaim and La Pastronería. The brief was a self-service restaurant for a young crowd, with a Moroccan atmosphere, in a building that had once housed an Arab kitchen.

The interesting decision is not the Moroccan styling. It is the floor. Rather than filling a seven-metre-high hall with a flat field of tables, the architects built a terraced landscape of timber platforms that climbs toward the back wall. That one move solves the problems a narrow, deep shed usually creates: dead volume overhead, poor sightlines and a dining room that empties from the rear forward. Here, every tier is a seat, a table and a viewpoint at once.

From a Kasbah Bar to a Skylit Hall

You enter through a compressed threshold: a compact beer bar that reads as a modern kasbah, with burlap-covered walls, pendant lights, a patterned tile frieze and a backlit perforated counter. At dusk it glows toward the street and does the job of a sign. It is deliberately tight, and that tightness matters.

Past the bar, the warehouse opens up under a steel-trussed, vaulted roof punctured by skylights. The contrast between the low, warm entry and the tall, daylit hall is the oldest trick in spatial sequencing, and it works because the architects resisted lowering the ceiling or dividing the volume. The full height of the shed is left intact and legible.

Timber Terraces as Furniture and Topography

The stepped platforms are the project. Built in timber and plywood, they rise in broad tiers along the hall, carrying brass-framed tables, stools and benches, with potted palms set into the levels. The exposed brick party wall becomes a backdrop rather than a boundary, and the track lighting reads the brick texture from above.

We read the terraces less as seating and more as an artificial hillside inside a box. They give a long, featureless floor plate a section, and they turn circulation into part of the experience: climbing to a table is a small event. The palms reinforce the idea of an outdoor courtyard brought indoors, which is a more convincing route to a North African mood than applied ornament would have been.

Designed for How People Actually Sit

The self-service model shapes the plan. Without waiters threading between tables, the room can afford level changes that would be awkward in table service. Diners carry their food up the steps and settle wherever suits the group: small tables on the tiers for three or four, long communal tables below for larger crowds.

The photographs show how readily people use the steps as seating in their own right, perching at the edge of a tier or gathering around a single table with a palm behind them. That informality fits the young audience the owners were targeting, and it means the room still feels occupied when it is only half full.

The Kitchen as a Stage

At the far end of the hall, a stainless steel open kitchen with twin ducts faces the dining tiers. In a restaurant named for the brasero, the grill, this is the right place for the cooking to be: visible from every level, with the terraces arranged almost like an auditorium looking toward it.

The industrial hardware is left frank. Polished steel hoods sit against brick and timber without any attempt to disguise them, and in the evening shots, light across the wall and a cook in a red cap give the room a sense of performance. The kitchen pulls diners to the back of the plan rather than leaving it as a service zone.

Seven Metres of Air, Light and Palms

With ceilings around seven metres high, the vertical dimension could easily have felt empty. The tiers use some of it, the palms use more, and the upper levels are edged with a light mesh railing that keeps sightlines open. From the top tier you look down across the whole hall; from the floor you look up at people leaning over the rail.

After dark, the room changes character. Spotlit palms throw shadows, the trusses fade into the roof, and the long tables fill. The project relies on a small kit of parts, timber, brick, steel, plants and focused light, and lets the section do the rest.

Plans and Drawings

The axonometric makes the strategy clear at a glance: a narrow hall with the lower entry volume at the front, seating platforms rising along its length and the kitchen at the rear. The floor plan, with tiered zones shaded in tan, shows how restrooms and service are packed tightly so the dining landscape can take nearly the whole footprint.

Sections A-A and B-B are the most telling drawings. They show the stepped timber seating sitting under the vaulted roof as a separate insertion, with the planters integrated into the tiers and the low entry volume contrasting with the tall hall behind it. This is a project designed in section, and the drawings confirm it.

Why This Project Matters

Warehouse conversions into restaurants are common in Buenos Aires and everywhere else, and most settle for exposed brick, Edison bulbs and a flat floor. Estudio Planta shows that the most valuable asset in these buildings is often height, and that a single sectional move can do more than any amount of themed decoration. The terraces give the space a structure, a social logic and a reason to stay.

It is also a lesson in matching architecture to an operating model. Self-service made the level changes viable, and the level changes made self-service feel generous rather than cheap. For small hospitality projects working with tight budgets and awkward existing shells, Tetuán is a useful reference: commit to one strong spatial idea and let the materials stay plain.

Tetuán Moroccan Brasero by Estudio Planta (Floor Plan), Palermo Viejo, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Area: 250 m². Completed: 2017. Photography: Javier Agustin Rojas.

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