Grizzo Studio Folds a Concrete Bar over Two Planted Mounds on a Lagoon Shore in Pilar

Lomadas House sits on a double plot in Pilar, Argentina, a suburban zone north of Buenos Aires where gated lagoon communities have produced a lot of large houses. This one, completed in 2023 by Grizzo Studio under lead architects Lucila Grizzo, Federico Grizzo and Rocío Martínez Serra, covers 460 m² and faces more than one hundred meters of shoreline. With that much frontage, most designers would line up glass along the water and stop there. Grizzo Studio did something more deliberate.

The project rests on one formal move. A bar of exposed concrete folds as it crosses the site and lands on two mounds covered in native vegetation, the lomadas that give the house its name. What makes it worth looking at closely is that the landscape is not decoration added afterward. The mounds hold the building up visually, give the plan its angles, and set how the house meets the ground. We think the result is a rare case of a big suburban house where the earthwork matters as much as the architecture.

A Bar That Bends Instead of Stretching

Seen from the corner at dusk, the house reads as a heavy, board-formed mass that has been bent rather than extruded. The upper volume cantilevers past the angled carport wall, and the roofline carries a planted strip, so the top edge of the concrete softens into green against the sky.

From the lawn side the effect changes. The building sits on a grassy rise, the roof is planted, and a curved retaining wall with ivy-covered slopes pulls the ground up to meet the concrete. The mass is still obvious, but the folding keeps it from turning into a wall along the lagoon.

The Mounds Do the Structural Storytelling

Lavender, verbena, tall grasses and orange flowers sit right against the concrete, with no lawn or gravel between them. That choice matters. Planting at the foot of the walls makes the building look as if it grows out of the mounds instead of resting on a plinth.

The sloping concrete walls help too. Where they lean back into the planted beds, it becomes hard to tell where retaining wall ends and facade begins. In our view, this ambiguity is the core of the project, and the angled corner opening in the verbena shot shows how cleanly the studio handles it.

A Perforated Skin Over the Upper Floor

Concrete takes the ground and the frame, and perforated metal screens wrap the upper volume. The screen covers an exterior stair, filters light onto the glazing behind it, and gives the long upper bar a lighter, almost textile finish that contrasts with the board marks below.

At sunset the screen glows above the glazed ground floor and the reflecting pool. The palette is limited to raw concrete and metal mesh, and that restraint is part of the appeal: the house does not need cladding variety to hold your attention.

Arriving Between Water and Concrete

The entrance courtyard sets up the house's main ideas in one frame: a planted concrete bridge spans a reflecting pool, and upper glazing reveals people moving inside. You enter under landscape and over water before you reach a door.

Inside, a narrow concrete corridor is lined with floor-to-ceiling glass on both sides, so planting and the lake stay in view as you walk. At dusk, linear ceiling lights, steel railings and a monstera planter turn the same passage into a quieter gallery. The circulation is treated as an experience in its own right.

Structure Treated as Gesture

Angled concrete columns and cantilevered beams frame a glazed corner, and the geometry is more expressive than it needs to be for structure alone. We read that as intentional. The leaning supports carry the folding logic of the bar down to the ground.

A figure perched on a beam above the carport wall gives you the scale: these are deep members, but the house presents them as lines in the composition. Toward the lake, beams recede in sequence alongside mesh panels and give the long elevation a rhythm.

Facing the Lagoon

The water side is where the house relaxes. A turquoise pool, lounge chairs and a planted terrace edge sit beneath the hanging perforated screens, and the cantilevered frame shades the pool terrace without closing off the lake view.

Seen from the reflecting pool at sunset, the beams and screens stack against the sky in layers. With more than a hundred meters of shoreline, the studio could have spread the program thin. Instead the house holds a compact edge and leaves the waterfront to the landscape.

Raw Concrete, Lived In

The double-height living room shows how the exterior strategy carries inside. Full-height glass, mesh screens and a single concrete column frame the pool and lake. The interior concrete stays raw, with balconies and a sloped wall overhead and sunlight drawing window shadows across the floor.

Softer materials are used sparingly. A low leather sofa and, in a bathroom, a rough-cut stone basin against a veined dark stone wall add warmth and texture without competing with the concrete shell.

Stairs as Small Events

The vertical circulation gets as much care as the main rooms. An exterior stair of steel and timber climbs beside board-formed concrete toward the water at sunset, and an interior black steel stair rises next to a planted bed of monstera and bird-of-paradise lit by a narrow window slit.

Both stairs bring planting and controlled light into tight spaces. The house's integration of landscape is not limited to the grand views; it continues into the in-between spaces.

Plans and Drawings

The plans explain the folding. The ground floor follows a fan-shaped site with angled walls, a two-car garage, a stair core and planted areas among existing trees. The upper floor stretches into an elongated, angled volume of bedrooms with green roof terraces, so the bar bends to follow the geometry of the plot rather than fighting it.

Why This Project Matters

Large houses on lagoon plots in Pilar usually follow a familiar script: a long glass wall, a lawn and a pool. Lomadas House works from a different premise and treats earthwork and planting as primary architectural elements. The two mounds of native vegetation are what the whole scheme depends on, and the concrete responds to them.

For practitioners, the lesson is about discipline. One morphological idea, carried consistently from plan to section to planting bed, produces more coherence than a list of features. Grizzo Studio shows that a 460 m² house can carry real weight and still feel rooted, provided the ground is designed as carefully as the building.

Lomadas House by Grizzo Studio (lead architects Lucila Grizzo, Federico Grizzo and Rocío Martínez Serra), Pilar, Argentina. Area: 460 m². Completed: 2023. Photography: Federico Kulekdjian.

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