Sebastian Irarrazaval designs Caterpillar House

Sebastian Irarrazaval oversaw the project for the house of an art collector and his family, located in the outskirts of Santiago in Chile. Caterpillar House consists of a prefabricated structure obtained by assembling twelve containers of different sizes.

Two main objectives that guided the design and compositional choices were on the one hand the desire to make the house an integral part of the territory, dominated by the imposing presence of the Andes, and on the other the need to easily obtain correct natural ventilation inside the house, in its different environments.

The volumes that make up the house were designed and positioned in order to almost appear to lie on the slope, with an eye towards the surrounding countryside and towards the city. This arrangement of the bodies has permitted the creation of a series of interstices between them with the result of improving the passage of light and air inside the house.

The use of the containers is motivated by the need to reduce the time and cost of installation and assembly, therefore the choice of materials was not so much geared towards low-cost materials, but rather to low maintenance materials. Openings, entrances and skylights are designed to optimize the integration of the residence within the landscape of Lo Barnechea.