EntrePircas Suites is a 360 m2 ensemble of guest rooms at Estancia La Paz in Ascochinga, Córdoba. The project reframes the rural pirca, a dry-stone boundary wall typical of the region, as a habitable framework. Seven parallel stone walls set at 5-meter centers support a single-slope timber roof and organize a sequence of galleries, bedrooms, patios, and wet cores. The linear system adjusts to preserve mature trees and work with the existing topography, embedding hospitality spaces within the historic park’s landscape structure.
EntrePircas Suites Technical Information
- Architects: Alarciaferrer Arquitectos
- Location: Estancia La Paz, Ascochinga, Córdoba, Argentina
- Gross Area: 360 m2 | 3,875 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years: 2022 – 2024
- Photographs: © Milagros Sánchez Azcona
We treated the pirca not as a façade but as a territorial instrument. Stone lines define use, shade, and air, while a precise timber plane negotiates trees and slope to settle the rooms into the park.
– Joaquin Alarcia
Pircas Reinterpreted: Context and Concept
The project translates the local pirca from enclosure to inhabitation. Instead of a single perimeter wall, seven parallel stone walls form a measured interior landscape that delimits suites with the clarity of agricultural plotting. The walls act at a territorial scale, setting a durable order within which matter, light, and air are distributed. This reframing retains the pirca’s role as a device of limit and use, now tuned to program rather than pasture.
Set within Estancia La Paz, a 19th-century ensemble with a park attributed to Carlos Thays and a man-made lake, the intervention pursues continuity without imitation. Material and spatial restraint align the new work with the estate’s rural substratum. Stone and timber mediate between historic fabric and contemporary occupation, avoiding stylistic echoes in favor of typological kinship.
Siting is calibrated to the existing landscape structure. The walls step and align to maintain clearings around mature trees while following the estate’s subtle contours. This approach treats the park as the primary context, using the walls as landscape-scale elements that register the ground and canopy, rather than treating them as isolated architectural objects.
Modular Order: Plan and Section Strategy
A 5-meter module establishes the project’s order. Seven load-bearing stone walls at this spacing carry a single-slope timber roof, creating a rational span and repetitive bay. The repetition produces clarity in plan and section, while the roof’s continuous plane ties the sequence into a legible whole. Structure, enclosure, and module coincide, minimizing the need for secondary elements.
Each suite follows a consistent sequence: a shaded entrance gallery, a bedroom, a light-and-ventilation patio, and a compact wet core. The patio sits between the living and service zones to mediate privacy and climate. Operable openings and the vertical void promote cross-ventilation and daylight, while maintaining a controlled separation of activities. The diagram is simple yet carefully tuned so that each space borrows light and air from the next.
Within the fixed module, local adjustments occur. Wall lines bend slightly or terminate early to clear trees, and the roof edge lifts or lowers to accommodate topography. These variations retain the linear logic while admitting necessary asymmetries, allowing the system to respond to site conditions without fragmenting the order.
Stone and Timber: Tectonics and Programmed Thickness
The tectonic pairing is explicit: massive stone walls articulate weight and permanence, while a thinner timber roof reads as a canopy. The walls register as strata of the landscape, their thickness compressing thresholds and deepening shadow. The roof introduces a precise contemporary element, its single pitch gathering the bays into a cohesive section and clarifying drainage.
Wall thickness is programmed rather than inert. Storage, mechanical runs, and service recesses occupy the depth, preserving the continuity of the stone planes and reducing the need for free-standing furniture. This strategy keeps the rooms clear and heightens the legibility of the primary elements. Openings are cut as measured voids, their jambs and reveals reinforcing the material’s mass.
Regional devices are reinterpreted with specificity. Galleries provide shaded transitions and calibrate entry, while patios bring light and air without exposure. These constituents of Cordobés rural construction are adapted to current hospitality requirements through precise sizing, operable shading, and integrated services, preserving the architectural logic rather than simply the image of vernacular form.
Landscape Integration and Environmental Performance
The galleries and patios support passive comfort. Deep overhangs temper solar gain at the entrances, and cross-ventilation flows from the gallery through the bedroom to the patio. The patio’s stack effect augments airflow in warm periods, while the stone’s thermal mass moderates diurnal swings. Shading devices and aperture placement are coordinated to balance daylight with glare control.
The single-pitch roof is oriented to one water for straightforward collection and discharge. Its geometry reinforces the linear order set by the walls and admits controlled light at edges and courtyards. Eave depth and gutter placement are tuned to manage runoff without intrusive downpipes within the living zones.
Earthworks are minimized by fitting the wall system to the existing trees and terrain. Foundations follow the natural fall, and precise alignments preserve root zones and canopy continuity. The suites read as an extension of the park’s logic, with architecture acting less as an object and more as a field condition, reinforcing the continuity between built threshold and cultivated ground.
About Alarciaferrer Arquitectos
Alerciaferrer arquitectos is an Argentina-based architecture studio founded by Joaquin Alarcia and Federico Ferrer Deheza. Operating out of Córdoba, the firm engages with local typologies and materials to develop contemporary projects rooted in place. Their architectural approach emphasizes structural clarity, material resonance, and spatial strategies that adapt to natural and historic contexts.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Structural engineers: Ing. German Sarboraria
- Landscape designers: Blas Spina
- Client: Pueblo Estancia La Paz
- Construction company: BONNART desarrollista
