White Cave - Takao Shiotsuka Atelier

The house is built on a hill looking down at a town area. The site’s shape has an irregular form. There is a height difference of 2m in the site. The north side is adjacent to a neighbor with this height difference. In the west and the south sides trees grow thick right next to the neighbors. And to the East, you can see the town area.

Walking to the site through a path that goes side by side, causes the scenery to change as we walk, and feels very attractive. We arranged the building parallel to the path and saved the height difference inside the volume placed across the site.

We wanted to give the building the same variety as the complex surroundings of the site and its irregular shape, causing disorder but not confusion, on a single operation. The angle of the walls is slightly changed to add more dynamism to the spaces as the user moves. Even the relation with the surroundings, that control and distances views and light, became complex.

The outside walls and the roof have a rough concrete finish, and the openings express the thickness of the concrete that form the volume. We wanted to continue with the characteristic silence of the place, given by the surrounding concrete wall, the ancient burial mounds park and the dense trees. We thought that the appearance of a hard static concrete volume responded to the surroundings of this location.

Architects: Takao Shiotsuka Atelier
Location: Oita, Japan
Client: Private
Project year: 2006-2007
Site area: 419 sqm
Constructed area: 132.6 sqm
Contractor: Hokoku Co. Ltd
Photographs: Toshiyuki YANO (Nacasa & Partners Inc.,)

Los Canteros Mountain Refuge - dRN Arquitectos

The site was an existing void in the middle of a slope, bound on two sides by magnificent old containment walls built of stone. These walls defined a level area of approximately 12×10mts, 7.5mts below the level of the road. A few scattered trees seemed significant, as vegetation is hard to find at 2000 mts high in the middle of The Andes Mountains.

The intense bright light reflected off the snow, together with the thermal loss through windows and walls are important aspects when building in the mountains. These conditions were something that the old mountain chalets, built in the town of Farellones during the 40’s and 60’s, took into account through small interior spaces and thick stonewalls with very small openings in their facades.

For designing this contemporary mountain refuge we proposed a monolithic volume of stone that partially fills the void left by the existing containment walls. Window openings are minimal and were placed so as to illuminate specific acts, or to frame certain parts of the surrounding landscape, keeping away the sight of the neighbours.
This simple stone cube is broken up by other elements that overhang from its perimeter, modifying the basic figure and giving it an orientation towards specific external features.

A horizontal window looking out to the main view across the valley below appears as another volume, which also serves a bench. A second transparent volume on top, serves as an access area that acts as a lamp during the night. Finally, a light steel walkway links the road with the upper level of the refuge.

The window of good weather for building at these altitudes is very narrow (6 months), so a rapid construction plan was required. We decided to build with a prefabricated steel frame structure that would reduce assembly time. This metal cage was then covered with different layers of insulation responding to specific needs; (much like the clothes of a mountain climber).

First, an interior plywood cladding for a warmer atmosphere in the inside, then a double thermal insulation within the steel structure, next a waterproof membrane, and finally an exterior cladding of black slate stone. This external finish resists well the harsh weather of extreme low temperatures, snow and rain. It also establishes a material link with the old stone refuges nearby.

Unlike the nearby existing structures, whose construction is now too expensive, here the stone doesn’t take a structural role. This is accentuated by the vertical and horizontal position of the stone and by not letting the cladding touch the ground
.

Mountain lodges normally receive more people than they can lodge, more mountain gear than they can store, more logs than they can burn, and the design had to foresee this situation. To take this into account the structure was divided into 3 independent floors. A first floor with 4 small bedrooms, a second floor with a common space with four areas for eating, playing, sitting and cooking, and a third floor for access and with enough space to store all that mountain equipment.

Maximum use of space in extreme weather conditions.

Architects: Nicolás del Rio y Max Núñez / dRN ARQUITECTOS

Location: Farellones, Chile
Collaborator: Oltmann Ahlers G.
Structural Engineer: Enzo Valladares
Contractor: Eduardo Torreblanca
Site Area: 435 sqm
Constructed Area: 140 sqm
Project Year: 2007
Construction Year: 2008
Materials: Steel, Stone, Wood
Budget: US $792 /sqm
Photographs: Felipe Camus.