Townhouse | Kallos Turin

The clients of this historic home in the lush Palermo Chico neighborhood of Buenos Aires had worked successfully with Kallos Turin on several projects in Uruguay and Argentina, including a residence, as well as a publishing house and restaurant. They were looking to create an elegant home with depth and individuality that provided numerous spaces for discussion and the exchange of ideas.

The original house was designed by Alejandro Bustillo, one of the great architects of the Beaux-Arts era in Buenos Aires. While he is said to have designed the house in the 1940s, he apparently fell out with original owners during construction.  The resulting house seemed to show a bit of that struggle.  The house had an elegant façade and many thoughtful and intimate spaces, which was typical of Bustillo’s work, but had a number of awkward details that needed to be resolved. 

Kallos Turin’s design approach was to restore the historic house, retain the façade, the plan of the main levels and the best of the historic details, but then to carefully insert modern design elements as a counterpoint to the historic spaces.  While the insertions are crisp and modern in form, the materials palette remains traditional, with vintage marbles featured prominently and plaster, wood and metal wrapping the spaces. “The question we posed to ourselves,” says Stephania Kallos, “is how do you take this glamorous, neo-classical house and translate that glamour into something relevant for this scholarly, modern-minded family.” Turin explains, “The trick with houses like this is to keep what is great and simplify what is not – to preserve a sense of luxury, but with restraint and with enough quirkiness to act as a foil to the classical nature of the original architecture.”  

In each of the rooms that foil is something different: at times a piece of furniture or a painting and at others a modern form or pattern. Kallos Turin was able to select pieces from the family’s personal furniture collection and opted to feature Studio Job’s work prominently throughout the house. The Studio Job works simultaneously draw from and subvert classical design and were the perfect way to stitch together the historic nature of the house with a 21st-century mindset.

The entry hall needed to be spacious and impactful to function both as a buffer from the street and as a salon for performances and readings. It connects to the library where the clients keep their important collection of books.  Off the library is an office with a Studio Job desk and oversized clock.  This level opens to a garden at the back of the house. The garden is centered around a large barbeque counter, which is the heart of outdoor entertaining in Argentina.  A pool is the backdrop to the garden and, though it can be used for swimming laps, is designed to read as a reflecting pond.  A planted-over mirrored wall is used to create depth at the back of the garden. 

The first level houses more intimate entertaining spaces.  The living room was a somewhat awkwardly long and narrow space and so was divided into 3 flexible seating areas:  a bar, a central gathering area and a more intimate pair of chairs by the fireplace. The large dining room is completely wrapped in terracotta-colored plaster using a traditional Argentinian technique.  Blue velvet chairs and a painting by Pablo Sequier provide contrast to the otherwise tonal space.  The dining room opens to a small kitchen overlooking the garden. Despite keeping its original size,  which is small for a modern house, the kitchen remains the powerful heart of the family space and its floor weaves together the various stone types used throughout the house as a nod to the room’s ability to lure everyone in. Prominent chefs from the owner’s restaurants frequently cook in the space.

Bustillo’s original curved staircase continues up to the second floor,  where the bedrooms and bathrooms are located.  The bathrooms are designed using stone from a collection of slabs owned since the 1930s by a friend of the family. The stone wraps the walls and the vanities are built as freestanding pieces of furniture sitting in the rooms.

To help clarify the circulation and to better integrate the top floor of the house, Kallos Turin extended Bustillo’s curved stair to the top level and added a skylight to bring natural light down to the entry hall at its base.  The top floor contains a gym, kitchenette, guest room and large terrace overlooking the city.  The marble floor on this level repeats the same pattern as in the kitchen. 

A basement level has been carved out underneath the house and garden to create an open space for a wine cellar, games, media and dinners.   This space is wrapped in wood and vintage green marble and can be reached via a back stair or via an elevator lined with Studio Job wallpaper.

Photography: Ricardo Laboughle

Website: http://www.ricardolabougle.com/