The WALL HOUSE (Santiago de Chile, 2004-2006) is designed by FAR Ltd. (Marc Frohn & Mario Rojas and team) as a suburban residence. As opposed to the general notion that our living environments can be properly described and designed “in plan”, this project is a design investigation into how the qualitative aspects of the wall as a complex membrane, structure our social interactions and climatic relationships and enable specific ecologies to develop.
The project breaks down the “traditional” walls of a house into a series of four delaminated layers (concrete cave, stacked shelving, milky shell, soft skin - click on the above link for more detail) within which which the different spaces of the house exist.
The layers build upon one another from the inside out, both materially and geometrically, and blur the boundary between the interior and the exterior, creating through the specificity of the different materials used (many of which are not common in architectural applications) a series of qualitatively distinct environments.
The building’s most standout feature, an energy screen typically used in greenhouse construction, constitutes the outermost layer, creating not only a diffused lighting and comfortably climatised zone inside but also, through its folding and sometimes reflective and sometimes translucent surface, contributes to the diamond-cut appearance of the structure.
[ For more information visit FAR Ltd.; thanks to Inhabitat for one of the photos]
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