Muller House

Arquitecto:
MATHIAS KLOTZ

42°48’20.54″S
73°28’56.93″O
Chiloé
Chile

Superficie casa: 330 m2
Superficie terreno: 12000 m2

The Muller house is located in Chiloe Isla Grande 1.200 km south of Santiago.  It is a summer house built beside a cliff on a small triangular plateau bounded by a dense arrayan forest which runs from the south to the east and by the seashore in the north and west.

The house is a rectangle: 7 m wide, 25 m long and 7 m high.  The building frees itself from the ground by rising 40 cm above it, spurning foundations and looking to express a feeling of lightness.  

There are, however, two elements which anchor it to the ground: the edge of the terrace and the curved cancagua stone wall, which identifies the approach to the house and rises like a reference to the Spanish colonization of the island. 

The image you get is of a large structure that lies on the plateau.  The house develops in three levels: 

The first floor has domestic rooms, game room and living and dining rooms. The second floor contains t bedrooms; and the third level is a big terrace. 

The exterior surface is formed by vertically-placed large timber boards with a horizontal feature every 40 cm separated by copper tubes, the objective is to give the structure a light character.  The modulation is also used for the woodwork of all the external doors and windows.

The Müller house aims to capture a feeling of marine constructions by incorporating such elements into a structure of impressive formal abstraction which conquers the natural environment by the contrast and imitation.

The imitation is characterized by the color and the materials used in the construction.  

The contrast is represented by the building´s shape.  The building´s relation with its surroundings is defined by the design as a kind of observatory which shelters man from the power of nature.