A Streamlined Home in Chile Straddles the Line Between Desert and Ocean

Three hours from Santiago, the capital of Chile, sits a town called Huentelauquén. As you head north out of the big city, the lush landscape begins to transform into a desert, which is what attracted Mauricio Bruna-Fruns here. In 2009, in his final year at architecture school, he was scouting with Ursula Oliva Reveco, who would later become his partner in their studio. They were looking for a place to build something manageable and humble that could be a natural getaway for Mauricio’s parents. Mauricio was seeking an area with a stable climate that wouldn’t be too extreme and would afford a view of the Pacific Ocean. Huentelauquén called to him.

Set as close to the ocean as they could possibly get it, B8 sits on land that was intended for farming, gifted by the government to the Chilean people in the 1960s. When the land refused to yield a crop, the project was abandoned and the acreage returned to its wild state.