Cien House

19. March 2012

Architects as Mathias Klotz (2G 26, 2003), Smiljan Radic (2G 44, 2007) and Cecilia Puga (2G 53, 2010) testify to a strong renewal of Chilean architecture, which has its prolongation in the younger couple formed by Mauricio Pezo and Sofía von Ellrichshausen, established in the city of Concepción, south of Santiago de Chile. Since 2005, and despite their youth, they have consolidated themselves as one of the most fecund and promising professional studios on the contemporary architectural scene.

The new 2G 61 brings together 17 of the Pezo von Ellrichshausen’s built works and projects, single-family houses for the most part, which permit to witness their evolution: from the compact & monolithic construction of the early dwellings (the Rivo, Poli, Wolf, Marf and Fosc Houses) to the most recent theme of a rethink of the classic patio house (the Endo, Solo and Guna Houses). The 2G61 also includes interesting exercises in the use of courtyards (the Parr House) or volumetric experiments (the Arco House and Cien House).

The magazine also contains introductory texts by critics Juhani Pallasmaa and Rodrigo Pérez de Arce, as well as a selection of the studio’s numerous artworks and ephemeral pavilions, revealing how its interests extend beyond architecture and explore disciplines closer to art installations, Land Art and abstract painting.

View from the garden

The number of steps on a hill path nearby, or the height of an old cypress -that reminds one of those described by Walter Pater- or even the height above sea level in round figures where the podium sits, would serve as decisive coincidences when it came to explaining the shape of the Cien House.

Pezo von Ellrichshausen studio

But the factors that shape a house are always the same. Unifying two floor plans -an extended one and a concentrated one- we repeated the same unit twelve times: a square figure asymmetrically divided into four rooms.

General view from the street

Living room on the upper rooms

Trapped between these two factual worlds, domestic life is protected; a large room for day use and a couple of bedrooms piled on it for the night. The main room steps down towards the west. By setting the lintels at a single defined height, the progressive sequence of frames makes the perception of its depth relative.

Cross-section of the house

Entering the main room is equivalent to diving under the platform whose height is defined by the whole number 100 (the name of the house, Cien, means a hundred in Spanish). You reach the studio by facing a mirror that shows in the inside what lies across the street. Entering the tower is a kind of blindness. Here, the cypress cut and turned into steps locks into a continuous spiral that slowly offers the sight back while ascending.

Lateral view at night

The construction is a regular and monolithic layering of concrete with exposed aggregate. Inside, the walls are covered in painted wood, almost without thickness and barely interrupted by the galvanized steel frames that hold the windows in place.

Walls covered in painted wood & spiral wood staircase

Cien House
2011
Concepción, Chile

Architects
Mauricio Pezo & Sofía von Ellrichshausen

Collaborators
Bernhard Maurer
Eleonora Bassi
Valeira Farfan
Michael Godden

Structural engineer
Patricio Bonelli

Built surface
430 m2

Plot surface
530 m2

Photos
Cristóbal Palma