Aglae House / AFARQ Architects

Casa Aglae (Aglae House) is our proposal for a weekend house in Santo Domingo, a seaside resort located 120 km from Santiago. The strong winds that prevail in the summer from the west, made us plan the house parallel to the length of the land, in an east-west direction, forming a protected inner courtyard as the predominant area of the house.

Thus, the design consists of a floor plan in which all the rooms have been arranged to the north to maximise sunlight. Only the master bedroom faces west, taking advantage of the sunset views. One of the few walls of the main façade serves to conceal the windows of the living room, which, being open, leave this area completely integrated with the courtyard. The wall that closes off the courtyard towards the street was clad with an old larch wood that was arranged in the form of slats of different lengths.

The construction is supported on 8″ impregnated pine piles, on which a slab and partition walls of 0.85mm galvanised iron were built. The exteriors were clad in 1×4 impregnated pine protected with carbolineum. We used 3mm steel plates for the upper and lower crowning. We were concerned to simplify the construction of this house as much as possible to achieve a very low cost, this is reflected in a simple and clear geometry without adding anything unnecessary to the building: both the structure, materials and details, were carefully thought out so that the house could be executed from a distance with a minimum of supervision.