A house in a former avocado orchard.
- Architecture
- OF Arquitectos + Paula Velasco + Alberto Moletto
- Year
- 2011
- Photography
- Marcos Mendizábal
Orientation, shade and even daylight.
Casa Buin stands in a former avocado orchard. Its most open façade faces north, while the entrance, kitchen and bathrooms are placed to the south. On the east side, the terrace sits beside an old avocado tree from the orchard, whose shade provides relief on warm summer days. Reclaimed timber wraps the walls and roof of the main volume as a single folded skin; a service volume clad in rounded river stones connects to it.
North and east.
The north-facing opening connects the living spaces to the garden. The terrace occupies the eastern end of the house beside the existing avocado tree; its canopy offers a shaded place to be outdoors in summer.
Light from the south.
A corridor runs east to west between the bedrooms and service areas. A south-facing rooflight gives it even daylight throughout the day without exposing it directly to the stronger northern sun and heat.
A timber skin, a stone volume.
The cladding boards arrived by truck from a property near Pucón. Reclaimed from old timber barns in southern Chile, they cover the walls and roof of the main volume as a continuous skin. With no eaves, the roof folds into several planes, giving the house a geometry closer to origami than to the conventional image of a country house. In this way, the house offers a contemporary interpretation of the rural barns that these same boards once clad. Reusing these boards gives them another life as many timber barns are replaced by buildings clad in corrugated zinc sheets. A service volume connects to this timber envelope and is clad entirely in rounded river stones collected near the house.
