Casa 23

Architects: Luis Izquierdo W., Antonia Lehmann S.B.

Structural engineering: Luis Soler P. y Asociados.

Main contractor: Jarco Ltda.

Location: La Dehesa, Santiago, Chile

Plot area: 962m2

Built area: 337,60m2

Project: 2003

Construction: 2003-2004

This house was designed in an eastern suburban neighbourhood of Santiago, when none of the adjacent lots were yet built. The site is 36.76 m. long, with a gentle slope from the access level. It faces the east and the Andes Mountains.

The program includes on the first floor a main living room, a dining room for 12 people, an outdoors roofed terrace, a family living room, an atelier, a guest bathroom, a kitchen, a service bedroom with bathroom, a laundry and a garage for 2 cars. The second floor contains the master bedroom with an en suite bathroom and dressing room, a library, three children bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.

The local authorities required a minimum distance of 3 meters to the mediators and a minimum front yard of 5 meters.

The above-mentioned rooms are contained in a concrete box stretched along the site starting from the building line. The second floor is closed to the west, north and south –corresponding to the street front and sideways– and open to the east, the garden and the mountains. Since the first floor surface is bigger than the second, the living room, terrace and the entrance hall are double-height, communicating the private spaces with the more public ones. In these places the concrete walls were set outside its glass enclosure –at the perimeter of the box– leaving exterior roof-pitched spaces between them and the landscape. Thus, the interior and exterior rooms converge into one single habitable unit.

The swimming pool was placed on the north side of the plot to avoid receiving the house’s shadow, being confined to a closed sector, for security reasons.

The front yard acts as a car courtyard, and the service patio as the head of the kitchen, clearing the largest possible area for the garden at the back.

Bibliography

Casa Cervilla. En: XV Bienal de Arquitectura 2006. Humanidad, calidad e integración. Chile, Colegio de arquitectos de Chile, 2006. pp. 56-59.

TIDY, Albert. El salto de la bailarina. Nuevo Diseño (14): 84-87. Chile, Mayo-Junio 2005.

LE FORT, M. "Nouvelle ére". Numéro (105): 186 - 191. France, Aout 2009

CASTILLO, Eduardo, Conversaciones informales. Germán del Sol - Luis Izquierdo. Ediciones ARQ. Serie Palabra, 2009.