Coquique House / Izquierdo Lehmann Arquitectos
Text description provided by the architects. This guest house is located next to a holiday home facing Lake Ranco in southern Chile. The project is conceived as a pavilion to contemplate the forest, consisting of two superimposed floors that exhibit both the similarity and the divergence between its parts.
The first floor contains a common area for living, cooking and eating, open to the landscape in 360° inside, and reflecting it on the outside, without inserting a front. Its circular plan is bounded by 18 equal modules of columns and beams which together with 3 columns and interior main beams support the loads on it.
The second floor contains 3 en-suite bedrooms in 3 independent “boxes”, closed on three sides and open to the treetops. They are arranged triangularly around a hall concentric with the circle, offset 56 cm. about its bisector.
The circular glass enclosure crosses these boxes and generates double heights that illuminate the hall laterally and end in an upper cornice. Inside, above the bedrooms, a lattice beam with a tall window connects both volumes into a unitary structure.
The decentralized layout of the stairs enables a minimization of the circulation between the bedrooms, qualifies a larger space in the common area and shows the harmonious difference between both floors.
While the structure of the bedrooms and the staircase clarify the inconsistencies of the triangular composition, the vertical modulation of the horizontal masonry coincides with the boxes and the glazed cabinet, masking different materials and forms in a common module. The unequivocal order of the circle and the multiple order of the triangle have as many differences as there are points of contact.
