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Photographs:Alejandro Gandarillas
Text description provided by the architects. The B8 House is located 270km north of Santiago, in an area characterized for strong winds that run through the pacific coast.
The original scheme was a house of about 50m2, with a flexible floor plan capable of reconfiguring itself to different uses and conditions. These are the basic premises for the design.All the "wet" areas and the BBQ are condensed in a one wall/volume that runs through the entire south facade, this decision helped to create more flexible spaces.
One of the main goals was to expand the constructed area, without increasing the original budget assigned to the house, to the related activities and situations that would be developed considering the owners life style. In order to achieve this, an articulating interior patio was proposed with the same dimensions of the standard module that is used in the house entry. This operation allowed the formation of an open outdoors space, protected from the wind and also a terrace, located with the same orientation as the mentioned outdoors space, towards the exterior. The compilation of all thins transforms a 50m2 house into a 91m2 total.
As a third decision, to divide the different spaces, the boundary material selected was sliding glass panels. These elements have the possibility to move, generating an interior-exterior limit that can be controlled by the user as he wishes to. This sliding operation allows to create different spaces, in addition to that, the onsite furniture plus the non existence of partition walls, results in a house where the divisions and subdivisions are only applied trough these glass panels and furniture.What is achieved is flexibility without compromising the use and performance of the overall space.
