Project carried out by Iván Bravo together with Martín Rojas (associate architect), in collaboration with Juan Oyarzún.

“To avoid being tied up / Let nothing unite us.” These verses from Pablo Neruda’s poem Farewell were proud thoughts of a couple that, though anchored in a stable relationship, never lived together, preferring to reside in different apartments – albeit not far apart from one another – in Santiago. They were in no hurry to share a dwelling, a project in a remote spot in the southern part of the country, close to Ranco Lake, that has taken ten years to mature. Aligned with the cardinal points, an exact cube is sectioned by the diagonal on two sides, presenting two different fronts: while the main facade uses its height to frame views of the lake, the other elevations incline toward a welcoming entrance. Like the exterior surfaces, the interior ones are clad in smoothened wooden slats, unifying the spatial sequence enhanced by emphatic roofs, which leads from a large living room to the bedrooms, which in turn face one another symmetrically at the far end of corridor so that the occupants, while each still enjoys a degree of independence, have a sense of conjointly making their residence on earth.