Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen

ConCePCiÓn APRil 2012

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Pezo von Ellrichshausen, Cien House,
Concepción, Chile, 2011
The house is located in a quiet neighbourhood
hillside, only 10 blocks away from the city
centre.

out-
lines
How should architects hammer out
their own personal design approach in
relation to a wider cultural identity?
Chilean architects Mauricio Pezo and
Sofia von Ellrichshausen of Pezo von
Ellrichshausen outline how their first
years of practice have been dedicated to
developing their own specific working
methods. Drawing on the physical
experience of space, their own evocative
thoughts and sensations, they transform
the simple natural structures of their
local surrounding into idealised forms.

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A cedar staircase connects the different levels,
stacked on top of each other with the centre
column working as a handrail.
A personal method is the natural
shortcut for the construction of an
object; but it is not – and nor should
it be – a sort of biographic expression
or ‘voice’ incarnated into the object.
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Perhaps the main concern of our first decade
of practice has been an attempt to develop a
specific method of work. A method should be
understood not only as a tool to develop a single
project, but as the core category of an ideological
position, transversal to the different projects of
a single practice. A personal method, the one
that appears by sheer intuition and without any
formulated programme, is the most efficient way
of solving an architectural problem (at least in an
intimate approach).
A personal method is the natural shortcut for
the construction of an object; but it is not – and
nor should it be – a sort of biographic expression
or ‘voice’ incarnated into the object. It is in fact
an intellectual medium. We could describe our
method as a schematic manner that is, sooner
or later, exceeded by its own realisation. It is
primarily based on rational and abstract models
of space, but it is also informed by the corporeal
experience of space, by evocative thoughts and
immediate sensations.
It could also be read as the idealised
translation of those simple structures of our
natural and cultural context; for example,
geography or informality. Somehow the limits of
our landscape are the limits of our world, just
because we know how to name them and read
them.
Sometimes we have called this method
‘the concrete liquid’: the project accepted as a
versatile process within a limited set of non-
hierarchical operations (is it the fragile balance
of our developing South American society?); the
project as a repetitive (certainly tedious) fitness
exercise through a series of small punctual
decisions, a kind of fluid in search of stability, of
consistency and unity.
Sometimes we have called it ‘the perfect
machine’: the project understood as an
anticipatory device, a sort of prediction
mechanism that has the capacity to erode all the
possible accidents of the forthcoming execution
of the object (is the fear for the unknown future
echoed within the fundamental city grid plan
structures imported to the new America, for
example?);1 the perfection of the system does not
lie in its formal definition, but in its almost naive
capacity to embrace any mistake from the very
beginning as a structural principle.
Furthermore, we believe that the conceptual
background of a project has the capacity to be
embodied in the specific spatial structure of the
building and, therefore, has the potential to be
perceived and in the best of cases understood by
those who inhabit it. In that sense, not only the
projective method is condensed in the final piece,
but also the proper architectural space (and its
structural logic), which is a significant conceptual
The programme is distributed in seven levels; The building is finished in concrete with The building combines two formats:
the workshop is located in the lower one, the exposed aggregate, where slight changes a horizontal podium in contact with the ground,
house in the next three, with the top three in gravel size differentiate location. and a vertical tower with distant views.
floors occupied by the office.

apparatus; a source of knowledge in its own

right, independent from the supplementary (and
former) discourse of its author.
Therefore, we have persistently tried to
replace the notion of form by the notion of
format. We assume that a format is no more than
the definition of a generic outline; a schematic
plan traced according to basic variables, such
as extension, direction or proportion. Non-
referential, non-contextual, non-constructive,
the format is a marginal line without thickness.
It is a silent general sense of an architectural
structure; its meaning can only be found in the
precise alignment of size (and therefore scale) in
a specific location. The format is always relative
to the situation.
Within this conditional framework, the
particular demands of the case can be articulated
according to a given (and often arbitrary) set of
inner rules. Again, the rules are an idealisation of
reality; a basic instruction that can be repeated
in different moments of the project. It is a kind
of self-obstructive guideline; a formal unit that
can be repeated over and over (for example,
the neutral figure of an opening in a solid
wall). But, despite its imperative character, this
non-hierarchical rule functions in its ‘relentless
persistence’ (as Krauss used to describe the
non-compositional sculpture): it is an objective
element that suppresses its individuality by being The distribution of the interior spaces is based
a mere minor part in a whole totality.2 on the variation of an asymmetrically divided
module.

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 The social area of the house is organised in a sequence
of aligned spaces, separated by thresholds and steps.

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 The base and tower are fully visible from the west,
Entering the tower is a kind of blindness. ... showing the seven stacked levels of the building.

The construction is a regular and monolithic

layering of concrete with exposed aggregate.

Cien House
Decisive coincidences such as the amount of
steps on a hill path nearby, or the statue of an
old cypress that reminds of those described
by English essayist Walter Pater,3 or even the
whole number of the elevation above sea level
that defines the podium could be used to
explain the format of this building’s silhouette.
But the reasons that shape a house are always
others; always the same ones. Within two
unified formats, an extended floor plan and a
concentrated one, we organise the same unit 12
times: a square figure asymmetrically divided into
four rooms. Sometimes central, others lateral,
or even in a diagonal disposition, each unit
establishes a different relation among the rooms.
Potentially, the lower rooms will be occupied
with the heavy duties of a workshop. The upper
rooms with the almost immaterial routines of
the everyday trades, always imagining edifices
from the air, to sooner or later fabricate them
somewhere else. Trapped between these
two factual worlds, the domestic life rests
protected; a large room for daily use and a
couple of bedrooms piled on it for the night. The
main room steps down towards the west. By Notes
maintaining the lintels at one defined horizon, 1. We prefer to read the city grid not only
as an urban artefact to found a new city in
the progressive sequence of frames makes the a new landscape, but as a conceptual tool
perception of its depth relative. to occupy the supposedly vast emptiness
of a new territory. In these terms, the
Entering the main room is equivalent to city grid could be understood as a tool
diving under the platform defined by the whole to dominate and control the unknown. It
was a geometrical device to anticipate the
number. You reach the studio by facing a mirror complexities of the specific circumstances:
that shows in the inside what lies across the it is a kind of formal manifestation of the
fear of wild nature.
street. Entering the tower is a kind of blindness. 2. In the ‘The Double Negative: A New
Here, the cypress turned into steps locks into Syntax for Sculpture’, Rosalind Krauss
explains the notion of ‘relentless persistence’
a continuous spiral that slowly offers the sight as ‘doing something over and over again
back while ascending. The construction is a without regarding success as any particular
kind of climax’. Rosalind E Krauss,
regular and monolithic layering of concrete with Passages in Modern Sculpture, MIT Press
exposed aggregate. A slight change in the size of (Cambridge, MA, and London), 1977,
p 244.
the gravel differentiates the texture of the podium 3. Walter Pater, El Renacimiento, Hachette
to that of the tower. In the interior the walls are (Buenos Aires), 1978. Original: The
Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry,
wrapped by surfaces of painted wood, almost 1873.
without thickness and barely interrupted by the
galvanised steel frames that hold the windows in Text © 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images:
pp 52-4, 56-7 © Cristobal Palma; p 55 © Pezo
place. 2 von Ellrichshausen

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