Chilean studio Paralelo Transversal has designed a rectangular house with a large hip roof and a terrace that cantilevers over a ravine in Puerto Varas, Chile.
Completed in 2025 on a 1.2-acre site near Lago Llanquihue, the 155-square-metre house, known as Casa Ensenada, was oriented around its roof.
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Close“In southern Chile, rain is not an exception but part of everyday life, so we wanted the roof to become more than a protective element,” architect Sebastián Silva of Paralelo Transversal told Dezeen.
“It creates a place beneath the rain, extending daily life beyond the enclosed rooms while bringing the different parts of the project together under one continuous gesture.”
The roof serves as the organising element for the program, circulation, relationship to the landscape and the home’s structure.
“Its section thickens toward the center while remaining remarkably thin at its perimeter,” Silva said.
“This allows it to be perceived as a light, continuous sheet while providing the structural depth required for long-span trusses capable of resisting both Chile’s seismic conditions and the strong winds of Patagonia.”
The house sits on a sloped site with a stream. Residents and visitors approach along the stream before the access ramp turns towards the house, where they enter at the junction of public and private zones.
The narrower side of the plan contains a large, open kitchen, dining and living room that bleeds onto the cantilevered terrace.
Oriented toward the northeast to capture winter sunlight, the house opens its living spaces to the landscape – the valley of Vicente Pérez Rosales National Park on one side and Calbuco Volcano on the other – through floor-to-ceiling windows with thin black frames.
The other side of the house widens to hold three suites. On either side of the house, the perimeter wall pushes under the roof canopy to form a covered bench and a planted garden.
The warm, contemporary material palette continues across the exterior and interior with exposed concrete slabs, large spans of glazing, tongue-and-groove timber and standing-seam metal roofing.
The concealed joints allowed the roof to be precise while reducing the visual impact of construction tolerances. The team collaborated closely with engineers and local builders to achieve its long spans and thin edge.
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Iragüen Viñuela Arquitectos uses mass timber for forest hideaway in Chile“Looking back, we believe the project fulfilled its original ambition of integrating architecture and landscape without compromising comfort, construction logic or budget,” Silva said.
“More importantly, it reinforced our belief that a project becomes stronger when one clear architectural idea is capable of organizing structure, climate, materiality and space simultaneously.”
Previously, Paralelo Transversal created a sail-like skylight that brought sun, shadows and air into a home on the outskirts of Santiago.
Other homes recently completed in Chile include a mass timber forest hideaway by Iragüen Viñuela Arquitectos and a seaside home with stacked terraces by Croxatto and Opazo Architects.
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