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.

The design proposal responds to the construction of an industrial environment by using elements of the industrial revolution with certain interventions of a contemporary style classified as steampunk. The challenge was to balance the industrial compositional elements and some Victorian style elegance. Thiscriteria allowed us to generate our own DNA outside the thematic schemes.

The choice of “secret” entrance and exit doors, covered in brick for circulation, was a premise that responds to the concept of clandestine bar (Hidden bar). The fictitious brick wall suggests access to the bar. At night a sliding iron gate covers the entire façade, which is completely graffitied with the image of England’s Queen Victory, work done by graffiti artist Martin Ron.

The strategy in the use of three “stations” to shelter the distinctive areas is the spatial organizational axis of the project. These stations are made up of 12 intervened oil tanks. The connections between the stations and the bar, through pipes that run through the ceiling, emulate the concept of whisky distillers, which inside does not transit alcohol but light serving a lighting function.

The last room where the living room is located is subdivided through screens with old scissor doors, which can eventually be moved to change the distribution. On the back wall is painted the face of Mr. Brown, whose image suggests a story.

Two artifacts were built, which work and have movement. On the one hand a clock designed through vertical gears, and on the other hand an old 19th century machine.