VIVIENDA DEL CUIDADOR
2006 / Los Niches, Curicó, Chile / Degree Project
Vivienda del Cuidador (Keeper’s House) is developed as part of the architecture thesis project at Universidad de Talca. Situated in the rural zone of the Maule Region, Chile, this project explores the meaning of rural architecture and living, as well as the reuse of construction materials for a limited-budget project.
Rural Living
The house is designed for a farmworker and his family, who also serve as the keepers of the apple tree field. By reinterpreting the vernacular rural house—an adobe wall structure with a heavy clay tile roof—the project preserves the basic architectural layout of rural living. The construction features a recycled brick wall system, creating a solid volume covered by an expanded roof with generous eaves to provide sun and rain protection around the house. These eaves function like the covered corridors of traditional houses, and the light metallic structure references the warehouses used in the local agricultural packing industry.
Material Reuse
Wood prefab houses are typically the default solution for new rural housing of this kind. These standardized solutions are cheap and often lack spatial quality. To balance cost and quality, we turned to reused refractory bricks from a nearby cement factory. Cement manufacturing is a highly energy-intensive process that produces waste and debris. The rotary kilns used to create the clinker—the intermediary product in the manufacturing process—are lined with a layer of refractory bricks that needs to be replaced every 9 to 10 months. By cleaning and repurposing this debris, the project provides an opportunity to recycle and reduce material costs.
Refractory bricks have high thermal performance. The project was built with a double wall of brick, allowing the regular face of the bricks to manifest on both the exterior and interior, while increasing wall thickness and thermal mass.
