Aladino Hous

Aladino House | Puerto Varas, Chile | 2021
[Iván Bravo]

Casa Aladino can be understood as the articulation between two architectures: Residential and utilitarian; contemporary and rural; contrast and mimesis. Both expressed in a single element of monumental character perched over the landscape.

The house is located in a clear stretch between trees in the south of Chile. It is built over posts which separate it almost a meter from the ground, allowing the flow of streams that run towards a lagoon located in front of the main facade. Its perfectly triangular geometry, in juxtaposition to the wilderness, emphasizes the contrast between nature and man-made.

The building’s program is shared in equal halves between the reception and storage area of a private park on one side; and the home for Aladino, the park ranger, on the other.

The project’s geometry determines that every space shall have an identical section and that the circulation shall occur in the same manner: through a series of central doorways from one extreme to the other. The absence of a corridor eliminates hierarchical spaces and reveals every corner of the building as it is explored.

The interior spaces are differentiated between them by the combination of a limited color and texture palette. The materials that comprise the construction are dismembered one by one throughout the length of the house until revealing every element, every joint, every detail. In the exterior, the project debates between the presence of a thirty-meter building throughout the silence of a neutral and monochrome facade, with practically no openings, that reminds us of the original larch shake barns of the area.

The structural system employed is expressed as much in the interior as on the exterior of the project and consists of a single dimensional lumber section at 60cm on center. Transversal beams every two modules defines the scale of each space as well as the mezzanines. The unchangeable nature of this system eliminates the need for walls and creates an interior space by two roof planes that support each other, elongating the height of the house to give space to the habitable. Text description by: Martín Rojas.