HUMO HOUSE
This house was commissioned 10 years ago and only two years ago it was decided to start the project. Despite all this time, both the client's requirements and the site have remained exactly the same. The clients are a couple who have never lived together, each of them lives in their own flat, just a few metres away on the same street in the capital. Therefore, this holiday home is the first time they will have their beds under the same roof.
Located in the south of Chile, in a natural clearing on a long piece of land that ends in a lake. It is flanked by a row of trees on one side and a small stream on the other. The height of the trees and the dense low bushes disorientates anyone trying to look for any element of the distant context. Only the direction in which the river flows make it possible to locate the lake, behind a dense layer of vegetation.
Humo house is an exercise on domestic dichotomies. Starting from a cube of 11m side with two of its faces split in half, the whole project revolves around the articulation of opposing pairs. The two larger facades open to distant views of the lake and to the site on ground floor; the two smaller ones are almost entirely blind, sheltering the entrance on the lower corner.
All the public areas share one half of the house on an open space of the full height; while intimates ones are distributed on three levels of the other half, just large enough to accommodate the owners and their friends visiting. Because the project celebrates the instance of sharing in the common areas, a long table made from a fallen larch trunk uses almost all the ground floor space, serving as dining table and kitchen unit. On one side of it the floor is lowered one step to give the necessary height for comfortable cooking while sharing the same surface of diners.
The two master bedrooms are on the first floor, one for her and one for him. The facing doors and the shared corridor allows a degree of intimacy between the two without altering their independence, giving room to that delicate intermediate point where they cohabit separately. On the second floor a study room opens to the triple height from above, and the geometry of the house and the big roof gets present by strangling to the very minimum one side of this floor, while quickly opening up to 5m on the other side.
Both interior and exterior are clad in raw timber slats stained one by one. The roughness of the material and the different shades of gray gives the house a timeless appearance, blending it with the always foggy mornings that gives name to this area. A winding path connects two small ponds, passing through the house entrance and terrace, and continuing across the stream to a fire pit. Continuing through the trees will lead to a small bay in between the dense vegetation, where you get a first glimpse of the lake.
