Smiljan Radic Clarke - Due case a Chiloé
Project type
On that trip we were accompanied by the silvery anemones of the hills of Chiloé and by those in the sea shoals extending from the Chacao Channel to the Bocche del Guafo, where the Chiloé inland sea ends
The mountains of Cucao are the highest on the island, wooded all the way up to the peak, rising 600 to 900 metres above sea level.
The Pacific sparkled in the sun. The opposed forces of the Humboldt current, meeting the cross-wind, formed whirlpools, and in the water one seemed to see a mass of splashing white dolphins tails, blue whales, dark killer whales and bottle green sperm -whales (
) .
Thus the great Chilean writer Francisco Coloane describes the great island of Chiloè in Golfo de Penas. The island and its archipelago form, again in the words of Coloane, the most beautiful inland sea on the south-western Pacific coast.
Characterised by traditional forms of construction in which larch wood is the preferred material, especially in the form of tiles which often entirely cover the walls of buildings, the islands architecture is highly characteristic, to the extent that its vast network of traditional churches, often in bright colours, was recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000.
This highly evocative, grandiose landscape is home to two houses designed by young Chilean architect Smiljan Radic Clarke.
Both characterised by a very free plan, which seems to reject the rigid functional distribution of the classic residence, the two homes stand out for the severe stereometric form of their volumes, which grant nothing to tradition beyond the use of wood, which is, however, left natural, emphasising its soft, evocative colours.
In the Habitacion in particular the severe, rigorous rectangle of the ground floor with a perfectly free plan, except for the small kitchen area is characterised by a rectangular grid of wood measuring 56.5 x 28.2 cm which discontinuously innervates the perimeter of the building and its ceiling.
The effect in the interior is that of a singular brise-soleil, the depth of which the right angles around which the module is constructed measure 5x15 cm around the perimeter and 5 x 23 cm in the ceiling creates unusual views, adding dynamism to the space by regular alternation of light and shadow.
Opposed to this three-dimensional grid, which reveals the buildings structural scheme, the flat floorboards return at a visual level in the interior surfaces of the upper floor, accessed via a ladder like one leading to a trapdoor.
On the outside, the house is clearly divided into two overlapping volumes: the lower volume, entirely made of glass, allows us to read the buildings wooden structure, while the upper volume, covered in white sheeting, is freer, more sculptural in form, without approaching the spectacular but sometimes gratuitous virtuosity of Gehry or Holl.
Even more exemplary of the desire to move away from the usual categories of perception is Casa Tecmar in Nercon.
For if the buildings visual pregnancy is achieved by means of the plastic sequence of volumes here too, the buildings sculptural impact is even stronger, emphasised by use of corrugated copper plates which provide a darker, more powerful colour scheme than the first house described.
The wood of the interiors also tends toward the dark red of elm rather than the lighter hue of the Habitacion, staying true to the darkish colour scheme of the exterior with a different material.
The buildings plan, a result of interpolation of two rectangles regularised by a long inclined wall, contributes an evident dynamism to the interior too, underlined by the different use of wood: here too, the free plan predominates, permitting the building to face almost entirely onto the landscape.
Also reminiscent of the Habitacion is the different treatment of material on the buildings various levels: for while one of the longer façades is completely closed off from the exterior with no protuberance visually attenuating our perception of the irregular form of the volume the façade facing the valley appears clearly divided into three levels.
The basement layer of exposed cement seems to detach the building not only from the ground but from the first level, in which the theme of the discontinuous glass part returns, clearly opposed to the concept of the closed volume of the metal upper floor.
Just as in the Habitacion, the short sides have large openings: in the Casa Tecmar, though, they are protected by being set back from the volume below and from the highly plastic fold of the roof, made of galvanised iron covered by light wood in the intrados.
The effect is that the opening forms a niche, an area of deep shadow, further demonstrating Radics desire to break off from the current visual tradition of the home, which appears more contemporary, more disturbing, more aggressive here than in some of Koolhas or van Berkels work.
The building is also clearly opposed to the serene, aseptic minimalism of much contemporary architecture.
So while the clear visual differentiation of the buildings various levels seems to recall David Chipperfields River & Rowing Museum, the home is radically differentiated from it in the almost brutal taste which not only imposes the architecture on the landscape, but uses asymmetries and distortions to make the building into a dynamic, alienating spatial experience, conceived in a way which could be seen as similar to the cultivated, contemporary cinematographic space of Massimiliano Fuksas architecture.
Elena Franzoia
Links:
www.arq.cl
e-mail:
info@arq.cl
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