#diego grass

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557. Enrique Browne /// House in Paul Harris Street /// Las Condes, Santiago, Chile /// 1980

OfHouses guest curated by Diego Grass. (Photos: © Guy Wenborne, Enrique Browne. Source: Enrique Walker & Ricardo Abuauad, “Enrique Browne Arquitecto: Obras 1974-1994”, Ediciones ARQ: 1995; Oscar Riera Ojeda, “Ten Houses: Enrique Browne”, Rockport: 1997.)

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560. Smiljan Radic /// The Room (La Habitación) /// San Miguel, Chiloé Archipelago, Chile /// 1992-97

OfHouses guest curated by Diego Grass. (Photos: © Gonzalo Puga.)

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555. Carlos Bresciani, Héctor Valdés, Fernando Castillo, Carlos García Huidobro /// Guillermo Santos House /// Papudo, Chile /// 1958

OfHouses guest curated by Diego Grass. (Photos: © René Combeau / Fondo Documental René Combeau. Source: Fernando Perez (ed.), “Bresciani Valdés Castillo Huidobro”, Ediciones ARQ: 2006; Hugo Eduardo Weibel Fernández, “Vivienda moderna en chile 1945-1965, Bresciani, Valdes, Castillo, Huidobro”, PhD thesis, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya: 2008.)

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558. Luis Izquierdo & Antonia Lehmann /// Alfonso House in Lomas Suaves /// El Arrayán, Santiago, Chile /// 1984

OfHouses guest curated by Diego Grass. (Photos: © Luis Izquierdo.)

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556. Christian de Groote /// House in Lota Street /// Providencia, Santiago, Chile /// 1961

OfHouses guest curated by Diego Grass. (Photos: © Felipe Rodríguez. Source: Fernando Perez (ed.), “Christian de Groote, La Arquitectura en Tres Décadas de Trabajo”, Ediciones ARQ: 1993.)

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Dear friends, for the next three weeks OfHouses will be guest curated by the Chilean architect Diego Grass.

Diego (Santiago de Chile, 1983) was trained in Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where he now teaches a course on Japanese Residential Architecture. Since his last years as a student (2006-), he has portrayed buildings and interviewed architects from all over the world for the editorial project he shares with Felipe de Ferrari and Claudio Mesa: OnArchitecture.

After two years as an associate in Izquierdo Lehmann (2010-2011), he co-founded Plan Común (2012). He quit Plan Común in late 2016 to form a nameless/webless office together with the French architect Thomas Batzenschlager, currently developing various projects —mainly houses— in Chile and abroad.

Diego Grass had prepared for OfHouses a very consistent selection of residential projects, for which he wrote this insightful introduction:

“Genealogy of the Chilean Box” by Diego Grass

I am used to it, but Chile seems to be —due to its remoteness— in the weird side of the spectre of what we call "Western Culture". It is not because it has any original traits. Not at all. It is because it tends to radicalize imports from the main cultural and economic centers in the West. One example is neoliberalism.

Box houses is another case, as some kind of caricature of the canon of modern architecture. Let's take Le Corbusier's Maison Errázuriz (designed in 1930): it revolted the architecture scene here because of its rocky basement and butterfly roof, contradicting his own 5 points which were just being slowly digested in Chile. This way, some local architects became more purists than Corb himself.

Up next is a short story of how I see this situation, explained through 7 box houses designed by architects from my alma mater, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) —the people I know better—.

First is Guillermo Santos House in Papudo by Collective BVCH —Bresciani, Valdés, Castillo & Huidobro—. Built in 1958, it emulates Lina Bo Bardi's Glass House (1950-51) and adds the car as the purpose of the flat roof over what could be called the first Chilean box.

Less autonomous than Santos, Christian de Groote's first built project in 1961 (House in Lota Street) poses the following question: is a box in the city doomed to be a patio house?

After a decade —the 1970's—  of political turbulence and economic stagnation (therefore, no single family houses), two iterations of the box during the early 1980's are particularly interesting. First is the green box in Enrique Browne's House in Paul Harris Street (1980, initiating his second stage of projects) and the box-embedded-in-a-hill by Izquierdo Lehmann's House in Lomas Suaves (1984, reminiscent of de Groote's unbuilt Roberto Edwards House —1980— in which Luis Izquierdo and Antonia Lehmann surely participated as associates). Both show times of fading faith in architecture and a growing search for answers in nature.

The 1990's show the box in full glory. Mathias Klotz's Tongoy House (1991) turns into the world canon of a box house —a title which could be disputed by Kazuhiko Namba— , whereas Smijan Radic's "La Habitación" (1992-1997) displays an urge to break free from the overwhelming easiness of the box - which it's clear in his later work.

40 years after Guillermo Santos House in Papudo, a young crew sick of the box's new status as a canon brought us Nautilus (AKA "the Glass House") right in the turn of the millenium. It tried to bring some sense of closure to 50 years of boxes with a social experiment: an inhabited glass house right in the oldest urban fabric we have here. Nautilus tried to kill the box yet it may helped —with huge loads of media coverage— to turn it into the standard. Prefab box houses ("mediterranean" homes —sic— ) are now mainstream: The box is dead. Long live the box!

(Cover: Christie, Jorge & Torres, Arturo /// Nautilus /// Downtown Santiago, Chile ///1999-2000. Cover image: © Cooperativa URO1.ORG, Jorge Christie, Carolina Stefanini.)

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559. Mathias Klotz /// Klotz House /// Tongoy, Chile /// 1991

OfHouses guest curated by Diego Grass. (Photos: © Ronald Halbe.)