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Architects: Cazú Zegers Arquitectura
- Area: 528 m²
- Year: 2015
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Photographs:Juan Purcell, Cristóbal Palma
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Manufacturers: Nuprotec
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Lead Architect: Cazú Zegers
Text description provided by the architects. At the foot of the Manquehue hill, in the Lo Barnechea commune, Casa Esmeralda is located. It is part of a family settlement built within a privileged sector of Santiago. The project, for the architect's mother, bears the name Esmeralda because her daughter Clara thus defines her grandmother's eyes.
Inspired by the traditional Roman house with the central impluvium, the construction is conceived as a regular square plan, with a central void around which to circulate and which, in turn, fulfills the condition of granting natural light and passive ventilation to the house. The regular floor plan is rotated on the roof to incorporate the contemporary look, causing an asymmetric volumetry generated by the eaves of the windows of the interior corridor and a fifth window that frames the natural environment of the Manquehue hill. The genesis of the geometry of the cover arises from the study of the formation process of the emerald crystal that grows in a system of platonic polyhedrons until it reaches the icosahedron. This volumetry generates the twist of the square plan, expressed mainly in the rotated central patio that is transformed into a contemporary reinterpretation of the classic Roman patio.
Located at the foot of the hill, with a slope of approximately 30 degrees, the volume is suspended on a forest of concrete pillars that fulfills a double function. On the one hand, the entire surface of the land becomes a garden, generating a series of intermediate areas that allow you to enjoy the extraordinary view of the site, covered terraces, and a barbecue area. And on the other hand, it allows the inhabitants to inhabit the exterior of the house for almost the whole year, enjoying a mild Mediterranean climate, characteristic of the central area of Chile.
The building is a wooden fuselage that rises from the ground through inclined concrete pillars that represent the image of a "forest", allowing the landscape to pass under the house, creating a covered outdoor space from which to look towards the mountain. A space conceived as a pavilion that opens onto the landscape, with a double circulation through the perimeters marked by the interior patio and the circulation in front of the closing façade of the house that passes along the windows but without touching them, generating a continuity through the different rooms. In this way, a democratic space is created, without hierarchies that restrict the inhabitation.
