THE BIRRA

The project is located in the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia, in Patagonia Argentina where the city's architecture is typical of a port city one.  The location was determinant in the choice of materials. This means that the materials used are mainly native due to the distance from the most dynamic and urban centers of the country. That implies a very rational use of materials, which are mostly wood and steel sheet. It is an architecture that appears to have stayed in time. The interiors are also mostly of wood and balloon frame structure.

The project started with the idea of ​​a diverse and varied grocery (traditional Argentine warehouse) through wooden boxes, and its “star” product, beer bottled in growlers.

The decision to involve growlers as electrical appliances and wooden boxes as shelving is an example of an intervention with elements specially designed to create an aesthetic proposal, that was absolutely related with the type of products marketed.

Lenga, authentic wood from the Argentinean Patagonia, was chosen as inner siding of the first floor. The blackboard painting was chosen to cover the ground floor and considered also as a way of communicating information about the products for sale. The project brings together two materials, wood and white tiles, to balance the palette of materials so that it does not rely solely on wood colors.

The distribution was a great challenge since the space only has 90 m2 and a width of barely 2.75 meters in ground floor and first floor.

In the ground floor the idea was to build a self-service and take out area, in response to the clients´ request of giving the space a flexibility that would invite different types of consumers. The first floor is distributed in a range of different uses: low tables, bars, living.

Hitzig Militello Arquitectos

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