There’s a View From Every Room of This Perched Chilean Cabin

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Project Details:

Location: Fundo Leona, Chile

Architects: Hebra Arquitectos

Footprint: 1,500 square feet

Builder: Tierra Fertil

Structural Engineer: Pedro Valenzuela

Photographer: Marcos Zegers

From the Architect: "The home is designed as an envisaged aerial volume with burnt wooden cladding on the exterior walls in the Japanese style of yakisugi. It is held up by tubular columns made of steel in order to give space to a spacious exterior deck terrace underneath in connection with the topography of the site.

"There home has two entrances. One is via a staircase made of native wood that goes from the terrace underneath to the ground level, contained within a stone cladded enclosure sourced from a local quarry. This enclosure also includes the utility room, storage area, and connects the house to the parking spots and the lower level. The second entrance is on the higher level, which connects the mountain slopes with the house via a perpendicular axis that spans the greater volume. It starts as a bridge in the north that ends up as a terrace in the south.

"The elevated floor plan contains all the important areas. The north wall, which goes through the corridor to all the different spaces, organizes the facilities: the front porch, the kitchen, the shelves in the living room, the closets in the bedrooms and finally, at the two ends it becomes part of the bathrooms. In the upper section of this north wall, a high window along the entire north facade was conceived to maximize the sunlight coming from the north. This operation keeps the south façade as clean as possible in order to have an unobstructed views of the landscape.

"The house contains three bedrooms, two of which are for guests and the third larger one that serves as a bedroom and art study for the homeowner. The layout of the enclosed space aims to allow common areas in the center by means of its modular symmetry, where the highest part of the quadruple fall down roof can be found, as well as the bedrooms and the bathrooms at the western and eastern ends respectively."