Brew House Quito building, Ecuador craft beer production facility, South American property designs

Brew House in Quito, Ecuador

25 February 2026

Architecture: Studio Alfa

Location: Quito, province of Pichincha, Ecuador, South America

Photos: Bicubik

Brew House: A place to live and work in the middle of the world

Brew House, a project by Studio Alfa, captures the essence of contemporary Ecuadorian architecture. Located in Quito, at the “Middle of the World,” the work stands out for its bold materiality—where Havana marble stone in gabions, brick, and steel merge into a highly expressive structure—forming a unique live-work unit. By integrating living and production (craft beer), the project challenges conventional boundaries of habitation, becoming a benchmark for mixed-use design with poetic architectural gestures.

Located in a low-density suburban setting, Brew House, designed by Studio Alfa, is situated on a site that, despite its relative containment, enjoys a strong connection with the existing vegetation and a domestic scale that allows for close dialogue with its immediate context. A large-scale tree at the center of the lot serves as the articulating axis of the project, providing a hierarchical sense to the spatial layout and connecting the architecture visually and emotionally with the natural environment.

The brief called for the development of a live-work unit that would allow its inhabitants to live and work in the same place, combining residential spaces with an area dedicated to craft beer production. This hybrid condition posed the challenge of integrating technical and domestic functions without evident hierarchies, fostering a fluid, flexible, and continuous system of spatial relationships.

The central architectural idea was to redefine the coexistence of living and producing by exploring a new house-workshop typology. From the beginning, the proposal sought to merge the industrial character of a workshop with the warmth and livability of a home, using the honesty of materials and an expressive structure as the means of articulation. Transparency between areas, clear organization of spaces, and the integration of poetic elements were key to the design.

Formally, the project is structured around a simple floor plan with regular axes that organize the different realms. This rationality contrasts with the expressive richness of the building envelope and construction details. Materiality takes center stage: Havana marble stone contained in gabions that form permeable walls; dynamically laid brick; polished concrete in social and industrial zones; wood in private areas; and steel in multiple expressions—ranging from a reticulated structure to a spiral staircase.

The latter, conceived as a sculptural element, becomes the heart of the project; beyond its function, it is a poetic gesture that breaks the general orthogonality and dynamizes the interior experience.

The pitched roof acts as a unifying and functional piece: it provides scale, finishes the central volume, and allows for passive natural ventilation. Meanwhile, the facade precisely articulates solids and voids, generating a vibrant plane that is sensitive to the surroundings and coherent with the constructive logic of the whole.

The project clearly resolves a mixed functional program, balancing the requirements of habitability and production with poise. It proposes a synthesis between the technical and the sensitive, between the productive and the domestic, blurring the traditional boundaries between living and working.

Brew House in Quito, Ecuador – Building Information

Architects: Studio Alfa – https://studioalfa.ec/

Lead Architect: Patricio Caamaño
Collaborators: Juan Pablo Jiménez, Angelo David Romero
Location: Quito, Ecuador
Design Year: 2022
Completion Year: 2023
Site Area: 500 sqm
Built Area: 240 sqm
Photography Credits: Bicubik
Other Credits: Furniture by KARE Ecuador

About Studio Alfa:
Studio Alfa is a contemporary architecture firm based in Quito, Ecuador. Founded and led by architect Patricio Caamaño since 2008, the studio believes that architecture is a tool for transforming the physical environment into habitable, sensitive, and enduring experiences. They cultivate a practice that combines critical thinking, technical precision, and a deep connection with the context.

With 16 years of professional experience and an extensive portfolio of works across various typologies and scales, they understand architecture as an act of profound connection: between human beings and their surroundings, between the technical and the poetic, and between the memory of a place and the projection of a contemporary, sustainable way of living.