LAKE HOUSE...

Today we feel inspired by this beautiful  Pirihueico lake house ( 2004, Chile ) design by ALEJANDRO ARAVENA, Jorge Christie and  Víctor Oddó. 


ALEJANDRO ARAVENA is one of Invitation To Inspiration's favorite architects. Even though he is more famous as Executive Director of  ELEMENTAL and their brilliant SOCIAL HOUSING design, we believe that Pirihueico lake house  is as beautiful as his other projects.

Invitation To Inspiration always believed that Architecture should be a humane and ethic profession. In other words, ethic means to participate in en event which improves the lives of other people... Elemental's social housing design is just like that, putting people's needs first ( if you like social housing you should definitely check out their work). 

Another thing that always fascinates us about Alejandro Aravena is his simplicity. In this world of bloated unlikable " star architects ", we remain in a state of positive shock when we see how modest and simple his work is, and yet so brilliant...

...and now back to the lake house...

...We were 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 us to consider all the variables that might be the case for the project and for­mu­late an equa­tion with them; the de­sign then had to be just the res­o­lu­tion of that equation...

...A volcanic site, 4000 mm of rain ev­ery year, strong winds from the north and the 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...

...Since the weath­er con­di­tions are very extreme, we start­ed tak­ing as less risks as pos­si­ble; we be­gan with the most con­ven­tion­al dou­ble sloped roof. Slow­ly, we moved on, ex­tend­ing one slope or the oth­er un­til touch­ing the frames on the perime­ter, look­ing for the views, but try­ing to avoid the winds. The rule for the win­dows fol­lowed the same prin­ci­ple of a surfer en­ter­ing the sea try­ing to avoid big waves: ei­ther you be­come shal­low or nar­row. If the win­dows were fram­ing a ver­ti­cal el­e­ment, like a tree or a path in the for­est, then  they had to be nar­row. If they were fram­ing a hor­i­zon­tal view, like the lake or the vol­cano, then they had to be flat...

We believe this to be a perfect combination of materials and colors in the exterior. 

...This ac­cep­tance-re­jec­tion log­ic of the op­er­a­tions, explains also the ge­om­e­try of the sec­ond floor; the first floor on the con­trary, is a dry re­sis­tant 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 clear­ance made in the site for the house. The dark­ness of the ob­ject, the col­or of the shad­ow the client want­ed, was the way we found, to resti­tute the orig­i­nal den­si­ty and vir­gin­i­ty of the place...

...to Invitation To Inspiration this looks like a dream house...What do you think?

    

We love how this house has almost no visual impact on the surrounding nature...

Hope you are inspired by this beauty as much as we are...

Have a nice Sunday everyone! :-))