A Cabin Springs Up Above a Dry Creek Bed in a Chilean Forest

Claudia García Cardemil and Ivan Petricio were thinking about the future when they decided to build a house in Chile’s Los Ríos region, more than 500 miles from their primary residence in Santiago. Their sons, Dusan and Andro, were nearly college age, and the couple sought a vacation home that could also serve as a year-round retirement residence. 

With climate change in mind, they decided to look in southern Chile—away from the coast, and at a high elevation beside the Andes mountains. Here, cooler, rainier weather prevails amidst a verdant landscape of forests, lakes, and rivers. Claudia and Ivan sought a modest yet lasting dwelling, rooted in this picturesque terrain.

"It’s a way to remember that nature is the most important thing," Claudia says. "That’s the idea of the house: It’s a place where I can get up really early and drink my coffee outside, watching birds and foxes—but also a place for the family to be together."

The site they chose, just north of Lago Ranco near the town of Futrono, was wooded enough to make them feel immersed in nature, even with neighbors relatively close by. Its natural topography, including a dried-out creek bed, became a source of inspiration for both the couple and the home’s architect, Simón Peréz of Santiago firm Hebra Arquitectos.

The Old Creek House, as it’s known, takes the form of a long and thin rectangle with just over 1,000 square feet of interior space. The home straddles the former creek bed almost like a bridge, and stones from the site were milled into cladding for a partially exposed basement/storage level that is nestled into the natural slope. "The house is growing out of the rock," Peréz says.