Avenida Juramento is a bustling, tree-lined street located in the Bajo Belgrano neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina. On it, a new wine shop’s metal storefront stands as a noticeable contrast to the brick-lined residential building it’s inserted into. Local architecture studio Juan Campanini – Josefina Sposito led the design effort. The project, titled Wine shop ‘Enofilo’ on Avenida Juramento, melds an iron mesh facade with the surrounding heterogenous urban landscape of Buenos Aires, a series of small fragments—projects, constructions, and architectures—that rub up against each other.
“The project is located in a neighborhood undergoing rapid densification, where this kind of domestic typology is gradually disappearing,” Juan Campanini and Josefina Sposito, cofounders of the firm, told AN Interior together. The challenge was to work with a type that is vanishing, maintaining its spatial imprint and organization while updating it to meet new functional needs.” While the building isn’t formally classified as historic, the duo treated it as such, preserving aspects of the building and minimizing changes.
The unique iron mesh facade is contained in a slim, square metal frame. Mounted on the original exposed brick wall of the building, the mesh provides a visual distinction between the wine shop and the residence. The gray iron mesh surrounds two glass rectangles, communicating the entrance to the wine shop.
Upon entry, smooth concrete floors are met with walls and a ceiling covered in textured plaster, painted in light gray with pale blue accents. To one side of the entrance, a wine library is constructed from iron and perforated metal, continuing the exterior material language. To the other side, a dark, sleek granite surface acts as a table, simultaneously concealing the service area.
The composition maintains the original configuration of the footprint: a narrow and deep plot with spaces around a patio, but there are reinterpretations. As Campanini and Sposito described, “Most notably, the staircase occupies the space where the original patio once stood, maintaining its role as a source of light and air within the depth of the block.” They continued, “Rather than erasing the existing condition, the project builds upon it, updating its organization to accommodate new uses.”
With the linear progression of the wine shop’s layout, guests are led from the entrance straight to the staircase. It is encased in a curved perforated steel shell coated in periwinkle blue. Natural light seeps through the cross-shaped pattern of the steel from the narrow, subtly lit vault that unfolds with the steps. It connects to the upstairs office where a large table, located adjacent to large windows, offers treetop views from the surrounding cityscape.
Wine shop ‘Enofilo’ on Avenida Juramento weaves a new program within a preexisting structure. The architects carefully suture new and old, and exterior and interior through the metal facade and staircase. They told AN Interior, “These two elements establish a dialogue between the street and the interior of the block, connecting the project to both the urban and domestic scales of Buenos Aires.”
