小房子丨智利丨AGB Arquitectos

Architects:AGB Arquitectos

Area:50m²

Year:2022

Photographs:Rodrigo Daza

City:La Vega de Pupuya

Country:Chile

Text description provided by the architects. Casa Chica is located in La Vega de Pupuya, Navidad, a town of farmers, fishermen, and seaweed gatherers, located on the coast 180 kilometers southwest of Santiago, a mostly rural area witnessing an explosive real estate boom due to its potential for water sports.

The commission consists of a refuge as austere as possible, in an open plan consisting of a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and as a result, in the two-pitched roof, a mezzanine to receive occasional visitors, just enough to settle in the place.

The plot was the main driver of how to solve the project, on one hand, we had an imposing sea view and on the other a pine forest in a context of ravines where this house is immersed, in response to this, we decided to locate the house in the lowest part of the plot, being very sheltered from any type of information outside the place, this also translates into the transparency and opacity of its facades. This isolated situation conditioned our operation in two ways. On the one hand, we had to work with scarce technology and local labor lacking specialization. On the other hand, we had to intervene in an idyllic landscape whose impeccable perfection would sooner or later be altered.

The small house does not pretend to be more than a refuge similar to that of a local resident present in the area for years, very austere with a lot of shed identity composed of a nave and a two-pitched roof with the exception that this one would be inhabited by a different character who contained that urban restlessness to contemplate the landscape, so on one of its faces it had to open completely to the sea, unlike the vernacular typology where the openings are exposed with great caution.

As for the materiality, the house is structured in traditional wood carpentry, its interior and exterior cladding are made of wood and corrugated pre-painted zinc lining on the roof.

Project gallery