Casa del Jardin Alargado
San Isidro, Lima (2016-2019)
House

Our clients’ original house, turned out being too small for the big family they had become (4 children). They evaluated the option of moving to another house elsewhere or buying the back plot on sale, and expanding there. We recommended the latter. The challenge was to rearrange everything as if it were one functional space tailored to their particular needs.

On one side, the structure of the family home was maintained, adding a third level (master bedroom, utility room and laundry) and renovating other spaces (own room for each child, kitchen, dining room) and adding balconies to the bedrooms on a new facade. On the other side, a new building was built for the new brief required: on the street level, parking space for 4 cars and storage, on the second floor, a pool and a terrace with a warm barbecue area and a living room with a fireplace; in the third, a music/study room and a home office.

The main reason they needed to grow, was to provide a spacious garden for the kids, so we made it the core of the new house. This way the garden becomes the connecting space between the two buildings, stepping up from the street level of the existing house towards the second level on the new building as a balcony to the backstreet. Artisanal bricks clad the garden walls to protect them and turn the house as whole into one happy elongated garden.

The addition of that third floor in the existing building, required a new staircase not only functionally but also spatially. That is why a large 3-level void with overhead light through a new metal roof was introduced. From it a staircase was hung (as a puppet) where each section develops freely to land in each floor with the best position.