CM by AtelierM
CM is a house in Escobar, Buenos Aires, Argentina, by AtelierM, set within a private neighborhood with strict rules. Those limits shape a project that answers with three brick volumes, one of them lifted to open the ground floor toward the rear forest and bring light and air into daily life.
About CM
CM House is located in a private neighborhood in Escobar, Buenos Aires, on one of the last available lots in a setting shaped by strict, deeply traditional regulations. Among those rules, the code requires pitched roofs—a condition that first suggests a conventional, repetitive image. Here, that restriction becomes the starting point for an architecture rooted in tradition, yet aimed at a contemporary way of living.
The project is organized through three brick volumes, each treated as a monomaterial block in which envelope, roof, and wall belong to the same logic. Positioned carefully on the site, the three bodies structure the program and hold a steady dialogue with their surroundings. At first glance, the composition reads as three gabled houses: simple, essential, almost childlike in outline.
That simplicity is intentional. It operates as a clear statement of synthesis, but the contemporary move lies in how the volumes relate to one another. One block is set transversally and rests on the other two, breaking the pull of convention without resorting to gesture for its own sake. The shift opens a broader, more fluid interior and weakens the line between inside and out.
By lifting one volume, the project creates a public ground-floor area directly connected to the landscape. The forest at the rear becomes the main reference, framed by the house and sheltered from neighboring views. The result is a lower level that feels open and light, where the mass of brick is read less as weight than as a permeable frame.
Two scales of simplicity define the house. At the larger scale, three pure volumes comply with the regulations while reworking a familiar roofline. At the smaller scale, a single material resolves the envelope and gives the whole composition coherence. Brick carries texture, color, and durability, and it supports a low-maintenance approach intended to endure across generations.
Environmental strategies reinforce that clarity. Natural cross ventilation supports passive thermal performance, allowing air to move without mechanical systems. Light is moderated with louvers, filters, and eaves that control solar gain and reduce glare. Thermal and luminous comfort are achieved with restraint, and the house uses less energy in everyday life.
That logic of passive efficiency extends the material argument. The robust envelope answers construction demands while anchoring the house in the neighborhood landscape. CM ultimately works through reinterpretation: it begins with rigid rules and a traditional vocabulary, then moves toward an architecture that keeps the familiar but shifts the experience of living inward and outward at once.
Photography courtesy of AtelierM
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