13-05-2025
This Rooftop Greenhouse Is the Ideal Work-From-Home Space for a Plant-Loving Uruguayan Couple
Amalia Branaa Donner and Uzi Sabah renovated a midcentury house to embrace nature—with the help of an architect they found in Dwell.
When Amalia Branaa Donner and Uzi Sabah moved from Los Angeles to Montevideo, Uruguay, their hometown, at the height of the pandemic, they had to find a rental quickly. They had moved back because Covid was less prevalent there, and they wanted to reconnect with family. A brisk search led them to a house in a residential area that had been off their radar: Punta Gorda, a neighborhood built on a low hill overlooking Montevideo's riverside promenade, known as La Rambla.
The couple enjoyed staying there and, during one of their afternoon walks, noticed a midcentury house that was uninhabited—and for sale. It had a simple, rectangular exterior, and because it was built on a slope, the back of the property had views over the neighborhood's rooftops and treetops and all the way down to the Rio de la Plata in the distance. It also had a huge garage occupying the entire ground level, which they immediately envisioned as a living space.
They decided to buy it, but they needed an architect to help them transform the two-story structure, built in 1950 and never renovated, into a contemporary family home for themselves and their two children, now 10 and 8. Amalia and Uzi are both creatives—she's a graphic designer, he's a filmmaker and an artist—so they wanted to work with someone willing to push the boundaries of convention.
"Everything was the way it had been designed in the '50s—the closets, kitchen, bathrooms all were from that era, and small."
—Uzi Sabah, resident
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