IR arquitectura Turns a Forgotten Pampas Farmhouse into a Greenhouse-Centered Guesthouse

The Argentine Pampas is not where you expect to find a woodland. The plain stretches flat and open in every direction, a geography of exposure. Yet on the outskirts of Rawson, in the province of Buenos Aires, a dense cluster of trees conceals a small rural compound that IR arquitectura, working alongside Menhir Arquitectura, has carefully recovered and reorganized into La Reunión, a 157 square meter guesthouse designed to host artistic residencies, smart-working retreats, and gatherings among friends.

What makes the project genuinely interesting is the decision to treat an existing structure not as a blank canvas but as a constraint worth honoring. The compact volume and austere character of the original farmhouse remain legible. Rather than expanding outward or modernizing the envelope, the architects intervened inward, organizing the program around a greenhouse courtyard covered by a translucent barrel vault. The result is a building whose spatial center is neither fully interior nor exterior, a social and environmental hinge that floods the surrounding rooms with light and connects the domestic program to the shifting weather of the plain.

A Woodland Clearing

Aerial views reveal just how anomalous the site is. The guesthouse sits within a thick canopy of trees that reads as a green island in an otherwise open agricultural landscape. The contrast is striking: where the Pampas typically offers nothing to hide behind, La Reunión is nested, sheltered, almost secret. The mowed paths and wild meadow grasses around the building suggest a landscape strategy that is deliberately low-intervention, letting the uncommon woodland do the work of creating atmosphere.

From ground level, the white stucco volumes emerge from tall grasses and pine branches like fragments of a rural settlement that has always been there. The terracotta dome, the corrugated metal addition, the masonry gateposts: these are the components of a working landscape, not an architectural set piece. The building earns its presence by refusing to announce itself.

The Facade as a Quiet Signal

The exterior language is disciplined. White stucco walls, terracotta shutters, arched openings. There is nothing here that would look out of place in a provincial Argentine town, and that is precisely the point. The architects consolidate the compact, austere character of the original house rather than disrupting it. The arched canopy roof visible from the front elevation is the one formal gesture that signals something new is happening inside.

From a distance, particularly across the wildflower meadow, the building reads as a pavilion: a white volume with a domed roof set against an enormous sky. It is a proportion game. The building stays low and tight; the landscape does the rest. At dusk, when the interior light spills through the arched entries, the relationship inverts and the structure becomes a lantern in the grassland.

The Greenhouse Court

The defining spatial move is the central courtyard, covered by a translucent corrugated barrel vault that turns the heart of the building into a greenhouse. Dappled light pours through the canopy, throwing wave-like shadow patterns across the white walls and concrete floor. A long dining table anchors the space socially. Planted beds along the edges soften the boundary between architecture and garden.

This is not a courtyard in the traditional sense of an open void. The translucent roof creates a tempered zone, warm and luminous, that mediates between the introverted bedrooms and the exposed landscape. For a guesthouse designed to support residencies and retreats, this in-between condition is critical. It is the room where strangers become collaborators, where meals happen, where the day's work gets discussed. The greenhouse is the social engine of the project.

Domestic Interiors, Carefully Framed

The kitchen niche, framed by an arched opening, is a small masterpiece of economy. Plywood shelving, white tile backsplash, terracotta floor. Everything is visible, reachable, and honest about its material. A jug of dried wildflowers on a timber shelf captures the design ethos in a single object: nothing precious, nothing superfluous. The kitchen connects visually to the barrel vault courtyard through a terracotta-glazed door, maintaining the continuity of light throughout the plan.

The bedrooms and workspaces are compact but never cramped. Red and brown gridded glass partitions divide the hallway from the sleeping areas, introducing color and transparency without sacrificing privacy. A chequered tile floor runs the length of the corridor, giving the circulation a graphic rhythm that makes the 157 square meters feel larger than they are. A writing desk positioned beneath French doors, flanked by colored glass windows, is the kind of detail that distinguishes a retreat from a hotel room: it is a place designed for concentration.

Dusk and the Domed Roofline

At twilight, the compound reveals its composite character. The terracotta dome, the corrugated metal roofing, the adjacent water tower: these are elements from different eras and different logics, held together by the white stucco ground and the consistent scale of the volumes. The rooftop view of the arched translucent skylight sitting atop corrugated sheeting beside the tiled dome makes visible a construction strategy that layers new materials over old structures without erasing either.

The building's most photogenic moment comes at dusk, when the illuminated structure glows across the wild grassland under a purple sky. It is a romantic image, but the romance is earned. The light comes from the greenhouse, from the shared kitchen, from the reading desks. It is the light of occupation, not spectacle.

Plans and Drawings

The site plan confirms what the aerial photographs suggest: the building occupies a modest footprint within a generous tree canopy, positioned to maximize its relationship with the surrounding woodland while remaining oriented toward the open meadow. The floor plan reveals the octagonal central space that generates the greenhouse courtyard, with surrounding rooms radiating outward through arched openings. It is a plan that favors connectivity over hierarchy, allowing every room to participate in the life of the center.

The elevation drawings show the compound's varied roof forms in profile: domes, pitched roofs, the barrel vault of the greenhouse, and what appears to be a small turret. The silhouette is additive, suggesting a building that has grown over time rather than arriving as a finished object. This is consistent with the architects' description of La Reunión as a growing infrastructure, capable of eventually incorporating an amphitheater, café, swimming pool, multipurpose hall, and observation tower. The current 157 square meters are, in other words, just the seed.

Why This Project Matters

Rural renovation projects in Argentina rarely attract the attention they deserve. The dominant narratives in Latin American architecture tend to favor urban density or spectacular new construction. La Reunión proposes something quieter but arguably more useful: a model for reactivating existing rural structures through modest, intelligent intervention. The greenhouse courtyard is not a grand gesture; it is an organizational strategy that transforms a compact farmhouse into a shared living and working environment. The brick, plywood, tile, and corrugated polycarbonate are materials available at any building supply in the province.

What IR arquitectura and Menhir Arquitectura have built is less a finished building than a framework for future growth. The vision of an amphitheater and observation tower emerging from the same woodland clearing is compelling precisely because the first phase demonstrates the discipline required to make it credible. La Reunión treats architecture not as an event but as a process, one that unfolds in the same slow time as the uncommon woodland that shelters it.

Rural Guesthouse La Reunión by IR arquitectura and Menhir Arquitectura. Rawson, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. 157 m². Completed 2025. Photography by Javier Agustin Rojas.

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