Parr House / Pezo von Ellrichshausen Architects

Architects: Pezo von von Ellrichshausen Architects – Mauricio Pezo, Sofia von Ellrichshausen
Location: Galvarino st 1983, Chiguayante, Chile
Project date: 2006
Construction date: 2007-2008
Plot area: 2.835 m2
Built area: 532 m2
Architecture photography: Cristobal Palma
Model photography: Ana Crovetto

Models: Juan Mellado, Carolina Merino, Maria Paz Palma
Structure: Claudio Sepúlveda
Construction: Claudio Bravo
Sanitary project: Marcelo Valenzuela
Electrical project: Juan Aroca
Heating project: Mauricio Comas
Constructive system: Reinforced concrete, wooden beams

This is both a huge and a small house. It doesn’t have extended rooms but instead a series of rooms that repeat themselves and some functions that are doubled according to the traditional Chilean country life. The house is located in a small farm where, until not long ago, stood the owner’s old house where his childhood was spent. It’s a setting filled with memories.

The witnesses of those moments are different kinds of fruit trees (from cherry tress to walnut trees) and native tress (from palm trees to araucarias). Beyond this suburban site there isn’t much; at least nothing visually attractive. Hence, the program extends horizontally in order to, besides occupying the depth of these gardens, conquering a sort of interior introspection and invisibility of its external presence.

The irregular structure, somewhat labyrinthic, together with establishing a series of variations responding to the size and proximity among rooms, contains nine patios open to the sky. Something similar to nine openings that control the density of the plan. The floor has no variation of levels. If the roominess of some spaces was made possible by elevating the ceilings to the equivalent of two floors, this decision couldn’t affect the patios by casting a shade over them. We therefore established two inclinations: that of the roofs, that always descends towards the patios (allowing only the shade casted by the vertical walls); and that of the ceilings, whose vertex sliced by natural light openings is located depending on the furniture of each room.

The weight of a tile mantle (that in some aspect resembles that of the old wooden house) hangs from these fourteen truncated prisms. Having small metal pieces is the only way of eliminating the seams at the edge (as if it were one of Burri´s collages) and through them of noticing the industrial yet crafted nature embodied in its surfaces.