Lichen House – Mauricio Lama – Rubén Díaz

The lichen is born of the union between two organisms where both benefit from each other’s existentencia through a symbiotic relationship, or through the light and water processing.

“The commission was a young couple looking for a different and fun place where to settle, allowing them to develop their various artistic activities. The start of the project is to study existing home, an adobe house of 1920 in a traditional neighborhood of Providencia “which needed to be bent in square meters to meet the needs of constituents, from 100 to 200m2.
To this end we propose to generate an adjacent house to meet this need, but in contrast of styles, with the new a parasitic element that draws from the existing space to its genesis and in turn the existing housing benefits from this new piece getting better natural lighting levels and energy.

The intention was that the new piece will rest on the existing one, to give character and renovated spaces, but with the main objective of not aggressively break into the front of the street, because the composition of traditional houses in the neighborhood provide homogeneity to the area, property owners who detonated in the purchase of this traditional house.

This way to the street window overlooks the volume on the deck, which marks the new spatiality of the home. In contrast to the rear facade (north) the house takes its own character and develops a more contemporary surround to fit the needs of their owners and in turn gives the thermal balance of interior spaces, which were not given enough light that the existing house had few openings and low altitude, receiving only shade in winter due to the proximity of neighboring houses.

1.re-use and recycling: more than 80% of the structure of the home was reused, hall, living room, circulation and wet part of the nuclei were restored. The other parts of the house that were demolished were recycled, the beams of the roof to the new terraces, floors and antique tubs and other household items such as doors and windows solid wood joined at specific locations to articulate both styles.

2. Active and passive generation of energy: The house is designed with passive design principles, covered and ventilated facades to the north west and east, eaves for sun protection of windows, skylights in winter and summer adjustable cover to give better rates light-shade and natural ventilation. Also installed on the roof solar collector systems for domestic hot water and one for the integrated swimming pool cover to keep from breaking into your design. 3

3. Flexibility: the functional uses of much of the enclosures can quickly adapt to new bedroom in front of the arrival of children.

-Corners entertainment, a long dramatic skylight high marks all traffic, the rehearsal room and yoga theater, bathroom with gardens, retaining walls in the kitchen lay recycled partly replacing the tiles, were some of the ideas for these corners. project supported by the artificial lighting in some precincts and bedroom were special requests from owners to decorate on a temporary stage and through the LED light stay spaces.