CASA III
Architects: Sebastián Cruz, Alfredo Thiermann
Team: Rafael Urcelay
Location: Somewhere near Los Vilos, Chile
Area: 150 sq/m
Project: 2018
Images: Thiermanncruz ©
As urban forces expand outward, reconquering territory previously defined as suburban, the opposite happens in the countryside. Suburbia tends to expand ad infinitum and a generic and homogeneous form of land subdivision proliferates throughout the country: plots of five thousand square meters impose a grid on large swaths of the territory. Most of them face west trying to catch a view of the ocean.
This apparently invisible condition causes two divergent forces to coincide in the typology of the house: production and reproduction. Production is present in how the house, as a type, allows the otherwise unproductive land to be sold and capitalized upon.
Reproduction is present in the sense that the urban domestic realm is transported, somehow loosely and playfully, to the countryside though houses. Whether voluntarily or not, we are often invited to operate in such a context, and thus Casa III is designed to be located pretty much anywhere in such a reality. In Casa III, the constraining footprint of the house is excavated, generating a new horizon closer to the existing vegetation.
The living room, kitchen and dining room are organized around a single, central wall that resolves the structure and program of the house. Hanging from the same wall, a triangular lightweight structure appears to float above the landscape.
