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In the green hills at the feet of the Andes in central Chile, architects and artists Sofia von Ellrichshausen and Mauricio Pezo have built their new home in a secluded area surrounded by forest and freshwater channelled through small streams coming down from the Andes. Impressively big and calm at the same time the structure is built without disturbing the natural surroundings.

“We call it a house but it is a very broad definition of the term. It is our private home, but we also consider it a cultural centre, as it is meant for more than domestic use. It is a place for our creative expression, and ideally, it will live on beyond our lifetime to become a creative space for other humanist and creative people”, says Sofia.

Exploring who they are through architecture 

As a couple who live and work together, their lives have seamlessly merged for two decades, sharing their academic and artistic lives and the internationally renowned art and architecture studio Pezo von Ellrichshausen.

“Early on, we realised that we had a very personal way of doing things. And we wanted to explore what we were doing through our own buildings. In that sense, the house is a consequence of something that started 20 years ago”, says Sofia.

Permeable architecture

The square-plan building is a visionary combination of a modern take on minimalist and brutalist architecture. The exposed structure in concrete becomes the focal point in itself, and rectangular and circular skylights and window cut-outs fill the rooms with sensory experiences. Built like a permeable building, you are always in a threshold between the connecting rooms to where there is no endpoint.

“For us, it is not only about making functional space in the pragmatic sense of saying we need bedrooms, a library, and studios for painting and carpentry, but it’s also about our relationship or our ethos to nature. Because of that, most spaces are really not functional indoor spaces. They are outdoor rooms with all these intermediate courtyards”, they explain, adding:

“We use architecture to articulate what is already there and to test how space can induce sensory experiences and feelings of recognition. For us, architecture is about perceiving and understanding distance, which in fact is one of the most concrete manifestations of time.”

Part of their way of exploring through architecture has been about blurring the lines and diluting the difference between artificial and natural. They have worked on cultivating a relationship with nature and been mindful of the surrounding area in building the house around existing trees.

Luna

The building consists of different structures that have a private courtyard with access to larger courtyards. The rooms are separated by seismic joints, much like a cloister. The idea has been to create private spaces, but at the same time, one should feel a sense of being in the same house:

“I compare it to living in an apartment building where each has their own space as well as you share the building with others, so in a way you are living together”, explain the architects.

Big enough to find your own space when you need it, small enough to feel connection with the other guests.

They call the house Luna in referral to the typology of rural traditional Chilean rodeo arena, called medialuna. The medialuna is a circular structure about 45 meters in diameter, made of wooden boards. It has inspired the big courtyard that is 45×45 meters with a lagoon in the centre inside where water naturally collects.

The off-beat location

“We are at an age now where we realise that we can go everywhere and live anywhere. In that sense, Luna can be understood as a remote and secluded world, that overlaps our creative practice expanding the notion of culture, following Candide, to cultivate our garden in a literal and metaphorical sense”, they say

Luna is the third house that they have built for themselves. It has similarities to their previous houses, including their atelier and studio in the format of a tower. But it is much bigger, and the location is entirely different.

“We both grew up in the south of south America, with a strong connection to wilderness. Since we met we had speculated with the romantic idea of a voluntary exile, a return to a more elemental form of life. The property is at a frontier point between valley and mountain landscape. Within this picturesque setting the building articulates all the possible spaces we had in mind for our own work writing, drawing, painting and imagining architecture”, Sofia concludes while smiling.