Piaggio House, the renovation of a two-story 1960’s house, has recently completed construction in the outskirts of Rosario, Argentina. This Argentine courtyard residence was designed for an extremely private couple who nonetheless love indoor-outdoor living. The 2,150-square-foot home proposes to transform typical mechanisms of domestic security and defensive architecture into social infrastructure through the strategic delamination of security grates and glass walls, thickening the threshold between interior and outdoor space with flexible verandas.

As a response to the client’s requirements for extra security features (fences, gates, and window grates), typical of single-family homes in this urban neighborhood (one invariably touched by two major financial crisis in the 2000s and 2019), Spinagu proposes an architectural design which redefines privacy infrastructure into a framework for social space-use. The strategy of layered voids and the separation of security device from glass thickens or expands the threshold or entryway of a home and allows it to serve as a flexible, multi-use space.