Till II House

The 2017 fire that wreaked havoc along Chile’s central coast reduced to a smoldering ruin the famous Till vacation home, an iconic construction built in 2011 in the signature style of the Chilean firm WMR Arquitectos (Felipe Wedeles, Jorge Manieu and Macarena Rabat). The client asked the architects to rebuild the house “exactly where and how it was”, not, however, in the literal sense of an exact remake, rather a new construction that would echo the modern living and architectural features of the former building. In fact, although referring to many of the original features of the destroyed holiday home, Till II pushes back many architectural horizons.
The design concept is permeated by awareness that architecture must be allied to nature, its physical presence compatible with the essence of the place. The new house sits on the ridge of a steep coastal slope leading down to the Pacific Ocean – accessible by a challenging unadorned wooden staircase that follows the slope down to the sea. Fitting effortless into its rugged setting, it sits unobtrusively below the ridge of the slope and the dirt road leading to the hill-side entrance. Less visible and nestled into its site than the former construction, the building nonetheless cantilevers out from its base towards the distant horizon across the ocean, this outward reach a signature feature of the new house.

Composed of two one-story volumes separated by an
open-air relaxation area with a huge wooden hot tub, the program is as simple as it is consistent. The component parts are linked by a continuous clapboard walkway on the sheltered eastern side of the house away from the ocean. Here, behind clapboard walls, are the spaces housing mechanicals and other service equipment.

The whole house, i.e., the main living area and separate guest quarters, is based on a 3.6 m square grid – slightly larger than the reference size of the previous house. The two blocks...

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