This Wood, Glass, and Metal Cabin Hovers Above the Forest Floor in Chile

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Project Details:

Location: Fundo Leona, Los Ríos, Chile

Architect: Hebra Arquitectos

Footprint: 1,140 square feet

Builder: Tierra Fértil

Structural Engineer: Pedro Valenzuela

Photographer: Marcos Zegers / @marcoszegers

From the Architect: "With the aim of making the forest the most important theme in the project, the cabin was thought of as an elementary volume, which tries to maintain the forest as much as possible, keeping all the grown trees and allowing them to grow across the deck. In order to avoid impacting the ground too much, the house was built on columns, to prevent earth from moving.

The distribution consists of a central common area, where there is a kitchen, a dining area, and a living room with a fireplace in the center. This space’s sensation of openness was achieved by carrying out three design operations. First, the roof ridge was located in the center of the volume, to allow for the highest interior space. Secondly, the entire facade in this segment is made of glass, even above the sliding glass doors. Thirdly, a wooden deck was conceived to span the width of the common space, so as to be able to go out of the interior on both sides, and to overlook the forest. Then, at the two ends of the wing are the bedrooms, on one side the main one with its restroom, and on the other side another two bedrooms with a partition wall with a sliding door, in case a family invites a guest.

Due to a limited budget, the house was very simple in terms of finishing. The exterior facade was covered in cypress in a natural tone, while the same wooden plywood used as a part of the wall structure was kept on the interior walls and ceiling. With the same logic of keeping costs down, the floor was defined as polished concrete."