Pirihueico house 

Luxury Pirihueico House - modern house

Architects: Alejandro Aravena, Jorge Christie, Victor Oddó


Location: Pirihueico lake, Chile


Built Area: 350sqm


Construction start: 2003


Completion: 2004
Materials: Stone, Wood, Glass


Budget: 1.000 US$ / m2

YEAR 

2004

TYPOLOGY 

single house

asked to design a summer/winter house in a remote landscape in the most southern part of Chile. More than a design, the client wanted, first of all, an equation that included every possible aspect that one could consider to be included; the design then had to be just the resolution of that equation.

A volcanic site, 4.000 mm of rain every year, strong winds from the north and east, views towards the lake (east) and the forest (west), considerations of the difficulty of bringing materials to this remote place, erasure of any a priori architectural language (be it old or contemporary) were the ingredients of this unknown dish, that should have the capacity to sound familiar once developed.

Being the weather condition very extreme, they started taking as less risk as possible; that’s why we began from the double sloped conventional roof. Slowly, we moved on, deforming it, looking for the views, avoiding the winds, using the frame windows as the arriving or starting points of the slopes. This acceptance-rejection logic of the operations, explain the geometry of the second floor; the first floor on the contrary, is a dry resistance box, able to deal with earthquakes and with the solitude this type of houses have to deal with, great part of the year.

Stones and wood came from the clearence made in the site for the house. The darkness of the object, will be a way to restitute the original density of the place.

Exterior

 

Interior

Planos y sketches

maqueta

Alejandro Aravena:

Ale­jan­dro Ar­ave­na (1967), ar­chi­tect Uni­ver­si­dad Católi­ca de Chile, es­tab­lished Ale­jan­dro Ar­ave­na Ar­chi­tects in 1994. He was Vis­it­ing Pro­fes­sor at Har­vard GSD (2000-05) and is cur­rent­ly the El­e­men­tal-Copec Pro­fes­sor at UC. He is mem­ber of the Pritzk­er Prize Ju­ry  and has been named In­ter­na­tion­al Fel­low of the Roy­al In­sti­tute of British Ar­chi­tects (RI­BA).

Pro­fes­sion­al Work in­clude Ed­u­ca­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties, In­sti­tu­tion­al, cor­po­rate and Pub­lic build­ings, Mu­se­ums, Hous­es and Hous­ing, and his last prod­uct for Vi­t­ra, theChair­less.

Awards in­clude the Sil­ver Li­on at the XI Venice Bi­en­nale, the Mar­cus Prize2010, the Avon­ni Prize for In­no­va­tor of the Year and the Erich Schelling Ar­chi­tec­ture Medal 2006 (Ger­many) among oth­er prizes.

His Books in­clude Los He­chos de la Ar­qui­tec­tura, El Lu­gar de la Ar­qui­tec­turaand Ma­te­ri­al de Ar­qui­tec­tura and a monog­ra­phy on El­e­men­tal by Ac­tar to be pub­lished in 2010.

Pub­li­ca­tions on his work in­clude the monog­ra­phy Ale­jan­dro Ar­ave­na, pro­gettare e costru­ire by Elec­ta, Ken­neth Framp­ton’s 4th edi­tion of Mod­ern Ar­chi­tec­ture; a crit­i­cal his­to­ry, Thames & Hud­son’s 60 In­no­va­tors shap­ing our cre­ative fu­tureand books by Phaidon and Taschen. Mag­a­zines in­clude GA (Japan), Icon, Mon­o­cle and Ar­chi­tec­tural Re­view (UK), Casabel­la, Lo­tus, Abitare, The Plan and Do­mus (Italy), Ar­qui­tec­tura Vi­va (Spain), De­tail and Arch+ (Ger­many), Mark and Vol­ume (Nether­lands), Ar­chi­tec­tural Record, Dwell, Prax­is and Per­spec­ta (Unit­ed States) and oth­ers in more than 30 oth­er coun­tries.

Lec­tures have been held in The Lon­don School of Eco­nomics and RI­BA in the UK, Amer­i­ca´s So­ci­ety in NY, In­ter­Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank in Wash­ing­ton, Ex­per­i­men­ta De­sign in Por­tu­gal and De­sign Ind­a­ba Southafrica among oth­er places.

Ex­hi­bi­tions on his work have been held at Har­vard GSD (2004), Sao Paulo Bi­en­nale (2007), Venice Bi­en­nale and Mi­lan Tri­en­nale (2008) among oth­er places. In 2011 he will be fea­tured in MA Gallery in Tokyo.

Since 2006 is Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of  EL­E­MEN­TAL S.A. a for prof­it com­pa­ny with so­cial in­ter­est work­ing in pro­jects of in­fras­truc­ture, trans­porta­tion, pub­lic space and hous­ing, part­ner­ing with Uni­ver­si­dad Catoli­ca de Chile and COPEC, Chilean Oil Com­pa­ny.

Otras obras de Alejandro Aravena

ETLIN HOUSE

MUSEO DEL VINO/WINE MUSEUM

MIRADOR ESPINAZO DEL DIABLO

Pirihueico house 

Luxury Pirihueico House - modern house

Architects: Alejandro Aravena, Jorge Christie, Victor Oddó


Location: Pirihueico lake, Chile


Built Area: 350sqm


Construction start: 2003


Completion: 2004
Materials: Stone, Wood, Glass


Budget: 1.000 US$ / m2

YEAR 

2004

TYPOLOGY 

single house

asked to design a summer/winter house in a remote landscape in the most southern part of Chile. More than a design, the client wanted, first of all, an equation that included every possible aspect that one could consider to be included; the design then had to be just the resolution of that equation.

A volcanic site, 4.000 mm of rain every year, strong winds from the north and east, views towards the lake (east) and the forest (west), considerations of the difficulty of bringing materials to this remote place, erasure of any a priori architectural language (be it old or contemporary) were the ingredients of this unknown dish, that should have the capacity to sound familiar once developed.

Being the weather condition very extreme, they started taking as less risk as possible; that’s why we began from the double sloped conventional roof. Slowly, we moved on, deforming it, looking for the views, avoiding the winds, using the frame windows as the arriving or starting points of the slopes. This acceptance-rejection logic of the operations, explain the geometry of the second floor; the first floor on the contrary, is a dry resistance box, able to deal with earthquakes and with the solitude this type of houses have to deal with, great part of the year.

Stones and wood came from the clearence made in the site for the house. The darkness of the object, will be a way to restitute the original density of the place.

Exterior