Arquitecto: Alejandro Aravena, Charles Murray.
Proyecto: 2001 - 2002.
Superficie: 250 m2
Ubicación: Pirque, Santiago. Chile.

When the Garib family asked us to design a house for them, we asked ourselves the following question:
Shall we do a box (modern, abstract) that very likely will be published but that also very like will leak? Or do we do a slope- roofed more conventional house, that doesn’t leak, but that will never be published? The question was, to publish or to leak?

This question reflects our concern at the time, of trying not to follow the clichés every architect knows very well, so that their buildings look “contemporary” (and because of that get published), but also not to surrender to the attempt to move one step forward the evolution of architectural language. We didn’t want to be ironic in the use of the sloped roof either. We were trying to balance innovation and pragmatism.

Due to the fact that we were building on a sloped site, we chose no to choose, but to do both: a sloped box that because of that, could avoid the leaks.

The other idea involved in the design of this house had to do with the fact that the young couple had received the terrain as gift from the father of him. His own house was close to the site on a small hill, dominating visually not just the beautiful Andean landscape but also the new just married couple. So one requirement of the client was to organize and orientate the house in a way that they could benefit and enjoy views and sun, but dodge the surveillance of the father. We did some research in military architecture (fortresses, bastion walls) and from that, defined a very introverted block to which we then applied the geometric principles of defensive architecture to shape the internal courtyard.

Both strategies of finding new ways of using the old good sloped roof and that of military architecture ( defensive dodge and opportunity) were used a couple of years later in the Pirehueico House.