Panama

Movable slatted-wood panels allow Teresa and Nicolás to control the flow of light as well as the level of privacy from the nearby road. The space between the screen and home acts as a small deck.

The whole project comprised only three months of design, two months of production (some 90 percent of which was completed at a Buenos Aires factory), one day of assembly, and five days of adjustments. The structure consists of just four 9-foot-8-inch-by-19-foot-7-inch modules supported by a foundation plate. “If we want to move it, we can,” says Teresa. “We could get a crane and disassemble it and then reassemble it on the coast.”

Architects Nicolás Tovo and Teresa Sarmiento designed their glass-encased vacation home for a site in Patagonia, a two-hour flight from their studio in Buenos Aires. Nicolás calls it “a magical enclave” overlooking Nahuel Huapi Lake. “It’s a panoramic viewpoint where we can watch what happens,” adds Teresa.

As Nicolás Tovo and Teresa Sarmiento of La Base embraced modular design as part of their architectural practice, they noticed that prospective clients were wary of prefabricated construction. So the duo teamed up with Place, an Argentine prefab builder, to make a proof of concept just outside the Patagonian resort town of Bariloche.

Floor plan for Refugio Bariloche by Nicolás Tovo and Teresa Sarmiento

After reading about landscape designer Ryan McWhirter’s firm in a local paper, architect Karin Scott reached out about working on a San Antonio, Texas, lot where she and her husband were building their new home.

The little house has a firepit surrounded by a steel bench that McWhirter designed, and the couple grow vegetables in raised beds. They “sped up the process a little bit,” McWhirter says, on the corrugated steel fence’s patina by using hydrogen peroxide, vinegar, and salt.