Budget Breakdown: They Built Their $60K Home to Preserve the Surrounding Forest

Instead of spreading out, an architect couple opt for a taller dwelling with a smaller footprint in Puerto Varas, Chile.

Mar 12, 2024 - 14:51

Budget Breakdown: They Built Their $60K Home to Preserve the Surrounding Forest

Instead of spreading out, an architect couple opt for a taller dwelling with a smaller footprint in Puerto Varas, Chile.

Camilo Fuentealba and Eduardo Díaz met in 2010 while studying architecture in the Chilean city of Concepción. They hit it off—both personally and professionally—founded their own firm, Estudio Sur, in 2016, and moved to the resort town of Puerto Varas a few years later.

Architects Camilo Fuentealba and Eduardo Díaz created a split-level layout for their vertically aligned home near the Chilean resort town of Puerto Varas. Rooms branch off from a central atrium as you climb up stairs and ladders.

Funds were limited, but the pair found an affordable plot of land about 15 minutes west of the city. Its biggest selling point was that it was still encased in native Valdivian rainforest. To protect the site, they went with a small footprint (about 1,075 square feet), building up instead of out. Then they placed square windows to frame the surrounding trees—from trunk to canopy—so that as you rise through the open, split-level plan, which is arranged around an atrium, you can "view the forest from different perspectives," Camilo says.