Recalling a friend’s reaction upon visiting her new home outside Rosario, Argentina, for the first time, Emilia “Emi” Porfiri laughs. “She called it a ball pit for grown-ups,” Emi says. The square, one-room house, filled with bursts of color, has an undeniably playful quality about it.

Emi, a professional translator in her early 30s, was looking to build an affordable first home, not a forever home or a place where she might eventually bring up kids. She wanted to focus on her needs in the here and now, not the future.

Born and raised in Rosario, she traveled extensively before the Covid pandemic, but it was during the lockdowns that she truly recognized the flexible nature of her remote work. Coordinating translations for a gaming start-up meant that she could work from anywhere in the world.

As she embraced a more nomadic lifestyle, splitting time between Argentina and various locations in Europe, Emi explored the possibility of buying land and building a home that would suit the dynamic she had adopted in recent years. A friend of her mother’s had bought a holiday home in Rincón, an outlying neighborhood in the sleepy town of Pavón, and the area appealed to Emi. It’s a place where many Rosarians have weekend retreats.

As you approach the house, a pink-painted metal-and-frosted-glass gate hints at something unusual within and slides open to reveal a front garden and a small stone-clad pool. Beyond the pool, the house—a concrete-and-glass cube—is set like a diamond at a 45-degree angle, its linearity offset by the undulating edge of the patio. On top of the thick, concrete roof, which is turned another 45 degrees, sits a fanciful navy blue water tank, teetering on the edge.

The house was designed by architects Ezequiel Adelmo Manasseri and María Sol Depetris of the Rosario-based studio Manasseri Depetris. Emi met them through mutual friends, and she clicked with them right away. After seeing their work, including a radical remodel of their period home in Rosario (featured on the cover of the July/August 2021 issue of Dwell), she gave them carte blanche.

“For us it was important to be able to design absolutely everything ourselves from scratch, from the house to the garden to the lighting and furniture,” says Manasseri. “Each and every feature was conceived especially for this house.”

“Generally, the choice of materials we use for the projects we work on are characteristic of our studio,” adds Depetris. “The choice of terrazzo, stones, stainless steel, folded sheet-metal cabinetry, mirrors, and other metal structures are part of a creative process we’ve been working on for many years.”

The bright pastels and pops of primary color characteristic of Manasseri Depetris are evident throughout, from the mint-green doors, window frames, and metal spiral staircase accessing the terrace to the powder-blue door handles, red storage unit, and blue water tank. The pair also designed the lighting fixtures in the bathroom and kitchen, custom-making everything in their workshop.

One of the challenges the architects faced was building in a rural setting a 45-minute drive from the city. It made them rethink some logistics, such as purchasing the materials and transportation. “We had to decide how to develop these handmade pieces. The shower, for example, a bespoke piece made of stainless steel, was fabricated in part at a factory and completed on-site,” says Manasseri.

The property, which measures 33 by 100 feet, is sliced in half by the house, creating three habitable spaces: the front yard with the pool, the house itself, and the rear patio with garden and barbecue. The roof doubles as a terrace and, because of its angle relative to the house, offers semicovered areas at each corner for shaded outdoor dining and socializing. Emi uses the roof for yoga practice at sunrise and sundown.

A whimsical navy blue water tank balances on the edge of the roof. In addition to serving as a terrace, the flat roof affords Emi the opportunity to expand the house upward someday, but for now she uses it for her yoga practice. “When I’m in Argentina, I come here every week,” she says. “I like that the boundaries between the interior and exterior living spaces are not clearly defined, just as I like that the weekends and weekdays blur into each other when I’m here.”" layout="wide" credit="Add credit" photoUserId=""/>

The compact interior includes a living/dining area and kitchen on one side and living/bedroom area on the other, divided by a two-sided metal storage unit. A rural retreat for resting and recouping during the Argentine summer, a space for her practice as a keen yogi, and a place she can safely lock up and leave when the fast pace of cosmopolitan city life beckons once more, the house is everything Emi wanted and then some.

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Manasseri Depetris / @manasseridepetris

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Pops of Color and a Concrete Cube Make This Argentina Retreat Like “a Ball Pit for Grown-Ups”