Text by the architects:

The house is located on the northern slope of the Sierra Nevada, a mountain range in the southern chilean Andes, part of the Conguillio National Park. The area is surrounded by pristine forest and the active volcanoes Llaima and Lonquimay. The site is located south of the town of Malalcahuello, right on the northern edge of the Conquillio National Park, an area of infinite natural value due to its particular ecosystem that brings together native forests of araucarias, coihues, raulíes, oaks and many other species. Despite the relative low altitude of the Andes at this latitude, this is a mountain area with extreme weather conditions in the winter which makes it a great spot for backcountry skiing.

A house in this environment should be a super light element, affecting the vegetation around it as little as possible, generating a minimum footprint on the ground. It should be an anti mimetic object, but a totally site-specific piece of technology (like NASA’s lunar lander).

The house is located inside the forest, in a small clearing, in order to avoid cutting trees or definitively transforming the land. It is s a vertical house of three compact floor plans. As a tower it allows to reduce the footprint of the house, go above the lower level of the forest and over the tree tops obtaining clear views of the valley. To reduce the time of construction to a minimum all of the structure is a steel prefabricated, precut skeleton, which allowed to build the it with a small team in just a few months.

The structure was thought as the juxtaposition of 3 structural systems, each one responding to the needs of each level. In the first floor the structure is concentrated in 4 supports by means of a spatial structure of diagonal columns, like a “tree like” structure, it generates a central “trunk” which is enclosed by translucent glass. This space is the entrance of the house, and its used to store the mountain equipments before entering the house. Large eaves keep the snow away from its perimeter during the winter. The second level is structured by a permitter lattice beam, like a bridge that rests over the diagonals of the lower level. In this second floor taking the estructure to the perimeter allows clearing the plan and locating the bedrooms and private areas of the house in a very compact scheme. In the third level, a large concave space is obtained by means of an A frame structure, but which is off the central axis of the floor plan, allowing to open the corners of the space and gaining a close relation to the landscape and the trees surrounding the house. In this larger space, 12 meters above the ground, the living and kitchen areas are located. This space gives a vantage point of the surroundings, as a watchtower detached from the ground, with a close relation to nature and the pass of time.