Designed by: @comodoroo

Captured by: @marcoszegers_archivo

Casa Humo was commissioned a decade before construction began, yet both the clients’ brief and the site remained unchanged throughout that time. Designed as a holiday home in southern Chile, the project marks the first time its owners—a couple who have always lived separately in neighbouring apartments on the same street—would share a home under one roof. The house sits in a natural clearing on a long plot that extends towards a lake, framed by a line of trees on one side and a small stream on the other.

Surrounded by dense vegetation, the site offers few distant views, with only the direction of the stream hinting at the lake beyond. The house is organised as an 11-metre cube, its geometry defined by diagonal cuts across two façades. This simple volume establishes a series of contrasts: the two larger elevations open towards the landscape, while the smaller façades remain largely closed, protecting the entrance at the lowest corner of the site.

The project separates shared and private spaces into two distinct halves. Public areas occupy a double-height volume that extends through the full height of the house, while the private rooms are arranged across three levels in the opposite half. At the centre of the main living space, a large table made from the trunk of a fallen tree found near the site functions as both kitchen and dining table. A single step lowers the kitchen floor, allowing cooking and dining to take place around the same continuous surface.

The first floor contains two separate bedrooms, one for each owner, connected by a shared corridor that balances privacy with proximity. Above, a study overlooks the triple-height living space, where the 45-degree roof geometry creates ceilings that shift from low and intimate to five metres high. Inside and out, the house is clad in individually stained rough timber battens, whose varied grey tones blend with the region’s frequent mist. A winding path links two small ponds before continuing alongside the stream to a small bay where the lake finally comes into view.