BUENOS AIRES PREWAR

This 4,000-square-foot apartment in Buenos Aires's elegant Recoleta neighborhood arrived with extraordinary bones and decades of neglect. A series of misguided renovations had obscured much of what made the original 1930s architecture exceptional. The work was painstaking and deliberate: peeling back layers of damage to reveal what remained, restoring what could be saved, and making new decisions worthy of what had come before.

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The restoration was a sustained exercise in local craft. Original moldings, floors, doors, windows, and bronze hardware were carefully brought back by skilled Buenos Aires artisans, each element treated as the irreplaceable thing it was. The floor plan was thoughtfully reorganized to reflect a more contemporary rhythm of family life: three fragmented kitchen spaces were unified into a single generous chef's kitchen anchored by a 3.5-meter solid wood island, and a bedroom was repurposed to create a spacious walk-in closet and a luxuriously appointed master suite.

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Bathrooms were fully modernized, with materials chosen to bridge contemporary sensibility and traditional craft, including hand-poured cement tiles and marble surfaces sourced locally. Art, custom-made furnishings, and fabrics were commissioned and curated to complete the interior as a cohesive whole. The result is an apartment that wears its history with confidence and its present with ease.

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Location: Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Size: 4,000 SF

Status: Completed 2018

Architecture: Jill Lewis Architecture

Photography: Albano Garcia

Builder: M2 Construction