FIR Estudio Adds a Glass Pavilion Under a Corrugated Concrete Roof to a House in Parque Leloir

Most residential extensions start with a wall that gets knocked through. FIR Estudio, led by Francisco Ignacio Ricart with Ayelén Gryszkiewicz, Gabriela Aragunde and Valentin Ricart, started from the opposite position. The Leloir Studio Pavilion adds 145 m² of space for work and leisure to an existing house in Villa Udaondo, inside a gated community in the protected Parque Leloir ecological area outside Buenos Aires. The architects chose to leave the original house alone. The new program sits beside it as a freestanding glass room, with a separate concrete canopy over the entry and garage.

What makes the project worth your attention is how much character it gets from a small set of moves. There is a corrugated concrete roof that reads like folded paper, slim round columns, timber-framed glazing and a green fireplace suspended in mid-air. Around all of it are century-old trees that the design treats as the main event. The pavilion behaves less like an addition and more like a furnished clearing in the woods.

A Room Placed Among the Trees

The aerial view explains the strategy quickly. The flat-roofed volumes almost disappear under a dense canopy, and the pool reads as a small clearing. At ground level the pavilion sits across the lawn from the two-storey house, close enough to belong to it and far enough apart to stay independent.

Detaching the pavilion is more than a polite gesture. Because the existing house sets no constraints, the new room can be glazed on every side and turn toward the garden. The tree shadows moving across the lawn and the glass become part of the interior.

The Corrugated Roof as Signature

The roof does most of the architectural work. It is a thin corrugated concrete plane whose ribbed edge and curved underside catch light differently through the day. A flat slab would have read as a lid. The fluting gives the edge rhythm and makes a heavy material feel thin.

We like how the planting is allowed to crowd the roof edge. Strap leaves and spiky foliage partly hide the junction of column, roof and glass, so the building's crisp geometry is always seen against something loose and alive.

An Interior Built From Four Materials

Inside, the palette stays tight: polished floors, sage green joinery, a ribbed concrete counter and a fluted travertine block. Each fluted surface picks up the corrugation of the roof above, so the interior and the structure share one texture.

The suspended green fireplace is the boldest object in the room. It hangs beside the slim concrete columns, keeps the floor clear and holds the same green as the cabinets. A golf bag left on the floor is a reminder that this is a room for leisure and not a showroom, and the glazing is open enough that the trees beyond take up much of the view.

The Carport Canopy and Gate Wall

The second piece of the project is a board-formed concrete canopy over the entry and garage. Here the material is treated differently: the timber grain is left on the soffit and the canopy sits on brick and stacked stone piers. It is rougher and more grounded than the pavilion's refined fluting.

Cobblestone paving, curved planting beds and a vintage car parked underneath give the carport a domestic, slightly nostalgic feel. A garage is rarely the place where an architect makes an argument about material honesty, and that is what makes this one interesting.

Circles Cut Into Concrete

Round skylights cut through the carport canopy and drop discs of light onto the broad-leaf plants below. The circle comes back again and again: in the columns, in the fireplace, and in the green flue pipe that rises past the roof overhang. It acts as a quiet counterweight to the long straight lines of the roof and glazing.

These openings also let the planting grow under the canopy. They turn what could have been a dark, dead zone into a covered garden.

The Pavilion After Dark

At dusk the pavilion becomes a lantern. The glazed corners disappear, the round columns and corrugated roof edge are lit from below, and a tree inside the room glows against the darkening garden. The sliding doors open fully, so the kitchen effectively continues onto the lawn.

Night views often flatter glass boxes. In this case they show something real about the plan: the structure is minimal enough that, once the lights come on, there is little between you and the garden.

Plans and Drawings

The drawings show the project's logic more clearly than the photographs. The site plan marks the paved path and trees as the zone of intervention. The axonometrics, with the roof drawn in pink, show the canopy linking pavilion, courtyard garden, pool and main house without merging them, and a roof terrace sits above the gate wall.

The sections are full of people: readers on the floor, children kicking balls, a figure at the counter, a small dog among the plants. That is a fair summary of the brief. These are drawings of how people will use the place more than of how it is built.

Why This Project Matters

Many families add space by enlarging the house they already have. FIR Estudio shows another route: build a separate, well-made room nearby and let the garden connect the two. In a protected landscape of century-old trees, building lightly and separately reads as a considered response to the site rather than a compromise.

The project also shows how far a narrow palette can go. A corrugated roof, round columns, fluted surfaces and one strong color carry the whole design, and repeating them between roof, joinery and stone keeps the scheme coherent. For architects working at small residential scale, the lesson is to commit to a few ideas and execute them carefully.

Leloir Studio Pavilion by FIR Estudio (lead architect Francisco Ignacio Ricart; design team Ayelén Gryszkiewicz, Gabriela Aragunde and Valentin Ricart), Villa Udaondo, Argentina. Area: 145 m². Completed: 2025. Photography: Matías Godec.

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