考廷河畔的房子丨智利丨Iragüen Viñuela Arquitectos

Architects:Iragüen Viñuela Arquitectos

Area:143m²

Year:2020

Photographs:Marcos Zegers

Category:Houses

Architects:Daniel Iragüen Contreras, Claudio Viñuela Schweitzer

Collaborators:Alexa Napp J., Gustavo Schweitzer E.

Builder:Javier Viñuela

City:Malalcahuello

Country:Chile

Text description provided by the architects. The commission came to us unexpectedly, after the client discarded a project they had started to build that same year. From this first attempt, they kept a steel platform on pile foundations, which provided us with a forced starting point for the project's position, which, by the way, was quite good, in a natural clearing of the forest, strategically surrounded by a meander of the Cautín River, with excellent views and sunlight.

We had to design a family retreat in the snow with a capacity for ten to twelve people, an informal common space for cooking, living, and dining, two shared bathrooms, storage, circulation areas, and utility spaces.

The client was expanding their family: three adult children, a granddaughter, and a recent couple with two younger daughters. In addition to these users for the house, friends and family would also join, so they expected to have a varied mix of visitors, an aspect that the distribution of the program had to comfortably accommodate within a limited surface area, both in group settings and private spaces.

We had been working on other projects with the idea of surrounding a communal empty space with private spaces, defining in this operation circulations, cross views, and a degree of independence between private spaces, trying to avoid hallways and clusters of bedrooms.

Being restricted by the existing platform and wanting not to extend into the natural ground, we decided to create a two-story volume. The idea of the "shed house," which was being discussed at that time, combined with the silhouette of the archetypal gabled house that appears in several examples of contemporary architecture, seemed appropriate to resolve the program while also defining a set of symbols and materials, a language that exists in that landscape and is recognizable to the client.

We had to deal critically with time and distance, as the client felt pressed for time and we were working from an office far from the construction site.

This led us to make most of the decisions in the preliminary project, which we developed with a high level of detail, hoping to quickly resolve coordination with specialists and start the construction as soon as possible.

Thus, we transitioned from a very detailed and resolved 3D model to coordinating the structure to create a partial delivery that would initiate construction, a delivery that included the entire steel structure and galvanized steel partitions, which we considered from this point on as immovable for the development of subsequent details.

We proposed prefabricating some structural pieces to facilitate work on-site, such as some steel frames, and although the galvanized steel partitioning was not prefabricated, having drawn each partition as if it were an assembly set greatly facilitated construction.

For the exterior cladding, which defines a large part of the house's identity, we copied the material, color, and idea from a nearby shed. It is not a heritage or outstanding shed, but rather a simple silhouette whose skin of wood, grayed by the sun and water, gives it a recognizable presence, with great synthesis, easily distinguishable in the landscape, yet integrating with it. The color of this cladding was already present in the landscape in old fences, tree trunks, fallen branches, houses, and old sheds. Initially, the client didn't think it was a good idea to use the grayed wood, but after a visit to the site, discussing the colors of the weathered wood present in the forest, they managed to confirm the observation and feel confident in the idea.

While the builder was advancing in erecting the structure, we were progressing in details of the roof, cladding, furniture, rooms, doors, windows, specifications, etc., in the office. We developed partial deliveries while following the construction from a distance, always with little margin for error, avoiding modifications to what had already been built.

This method of partial deliveries ended up working well (despite the pandemic catching up with us), as it forced us to provide precise plans and information for the items that needed to be developed immediately afterwards, allowing the builder to receive manageable doses of information that were easy to process.

At the last minute, the client wanted to add a wood-burning stove, an item they had initially eliminated to avoid dealing with the associated work. The longing for fire in a retreat revived this idea with the house almost finished. We turned to a factory that specializes in custom stove projects and managed to add it without affecting the original design. Today, it is a great addition.

We made four visits to verify the progress of the work, generally with few corrections. The remote follow-up, combined with the partial deliveries, was sufficient to accompany the construction process.

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