MÜLLER House / Eugenio Ortúzar + Tania Gebauer

Architects: Eugenio Ortúzar + Tania Gebauer
Location: Ancud, Chile
Area: 72.0 m2
Project Year: 2016
Photographs: Ortuzargebauer arquitectos

Collaborator Archictet: Tal Sustiel

From the architect. This project is born from the quest to put into practice four essential principles of architecture: Functionality / Efficiency in the use of resources / Correct use of passive energies and / The recognition of the place, as a comprehension of a territory and a culture.

Recognition of the site:

Morphologically the project appears as a volume with two distinct expressions; a small shed, hermetic and closed to the outside access space, so that only once from the interior of the house, there is a re encounter with the place, through a glazed facade, in the form of a curtain wall, from floor to ceiling, which highlights the beauty of the place as a whole.

Functionality:

The house is thought from the optimization of the square meters, the comfort and privacy of the enclosures. For the latter, the two bedrooms were located at the two ends of the house, as inhabited poles, retaining their privacy with the rest of the house.

The bathroom, together with the kitchen, forms a single wet and structural core, adjacent to the main bedroom, serving the rest of the house.

This distribution leaves the public space completely integrated in the center of the house and linked directly with the kitchen, dining area, living area and a translucent covered terrace, which allows to enjoy the outside, protected from the heavy rains.

The main access, sheltered from the central volume, opens from the south, avoiding the exposure of the rains and winds, through an access ramp, facilitating access for people with disabilities.

Correct use of Passive Energy:

In order to achieve greater comfort and optimize passive energy, through a completely glazed façade the house, allows to receive and capture as much as possible the path of the sun in its north façade, at the same time as it closes in a hermetic way as a curtain wall to avoid the heavy rains.

Opposite the north facade, the south façade, is the one in charge of ventilating the house, through specific windows serving as wind tunnels, to ventilate and to refresh in a natural form the interior of the house in the months of spring and summer.

As for the rain, two channels at each of its elongated facades, developed over the entire length of the house, allow to recover and to accumulate it for diverse uses.

Materiality: Resources Efficiency

The optimization of the use of resources, allowed to build this house in only 2 months, at a low price per squared meter and reduce to almost zero the amount of waste during construction process.

In order to achieve the above, the house was designed by virtue of the materials to be used: Flooring plywood, cladding and furniture 244/122, wood for structures 360 cm, and zinc plating pre painted black, which allows to absorb heat in a cold area, while at the same time making the work mimetic with the place.

Lastly, to complete the sustainability of the project, it is constructed entirely with renewable wood using local labor.