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This house for an artist by LCLA Office reaches out to the luxuriant landscape of Colombias eastern AntioquiaThis project was commended in the 2024 AR House awards. Read about the full shortlist hereLiving in this house is like living in a garden, with my bed laid on the grass, says Rodrigo Callejas when showing me hisnew home in El Carmen de Viboral, at2,100 metres above sea level. In the tropics, altitude is an important indication of climate. In this village renowned for its ceramics and situated an hour away from Medelln, Colombia, it is never too hot nortoo cold. Diverging from traditional conceptions of shelter, Ocarina House doesnot need to be a refuge that protects inhabitants from the external. Instead, the elements can permeate the interior. The building is immersed in the landscape, and the surrounding vegetation is, in turn, an integral part of the home. The architecture is one of subtle barriers and surfaces that define the interior and mediate relations with the exterior, without hardness or fierce opposition.The home is articulated by a 16mlong brick wall that runs parallel to the topography. The projects main structural element, it contains the sloping terrain toone side and provides a backbone alongwhich everyday life can unravel onthe other. The only element uphill is adiagonal beam that extends from the neartop of this wall down to the clay soil.Sincethe ground is unstable and thearchitect wanted to avoid massive andexpensive piles, the house is placed ona floating concrete slab. The diagonal beam is what anchors the structure in the terrain; it prevents it from sliding while transferring the roofs weight to the concrete slab beneath.The encounter between a slope and a designed perimeter immediately produces the image of a potential interior condition, the architect Luis Callejas explains in the recently published Houses in Forest Clearings. Allour efforts go into giving precision and resolution to both the architectural form and the terrains shape simultaneously. The founder of LCLA Officedesigned Ocarina House for his fatherRodrigo Callejas, a Colombian artistdistinguished for his paintings and sculptures. In both their work, landscape ispresent as a means of inspiration and as aresource. Rodrigo initially trained withthe painter Rafael Senz Moreno, studying the geography surrounding Medelln and the broader Antioquia region. For Luis, landscape and architecture are continuations of oneanother.Downhill of the main structural wall, Ocarina House is a single long room, divided into different spaces by level changes and wall fragments, that reaches for the landscape. The interior area used for dining extends onto a generous terrace that leads to the forest, where avocado trees (Persea americana), taros (Colocasia esculenta) and magenta cherry (Syzygium paniculatum) are growing. Most of them were planted before the house was built, but others were added more recently by Rodrigo, granting further seclusion and privacy to the exterior space.Two smaller sheets of glass unlike more conventional windows, these are frameless and fixed inserted in the main wall look back towards the rising terrain to the east, while a large opening has been cut out of the western facade, offering layered views of the valley beyond, with agricultural lands closer to the house andthe Eastern Ranges in the distance. Largeglazed doors mounted on thin metalframes pivot or slide to allow seamless continuity with thegarden.The architecture is one of subtle barriers and surfaces that mediate relations with the exteriorsugg without hardness or fierce oppositionThe rigour of structural decisions creates a continuous living space, allowing for a certain spatial freedom and flexibility of use. The functions and boundaries of the different areas are deliberately ambiguous. Instead, objects indicate usage: a mattress and pillows on the elevated platform, a rocking chair in front of the large opening, a table beside a portion of the builtin bench. Even the spacious shower room suggests other potential uses; its bulging semicircular envelope gives it an unusual prominence, and the diffuse daylight makes it an ideal spot to display Rodrigos sculptures.Besides a house, the building was conceived as a gallery that could be used to exhibit the owners work now that hehas decided to be independent from gallerists and managers. Some of his clay and bronze creatures currently live on the ledge of the 240mmthick structural wall. When the mattress is removed, the cleared platform as well asthe benches are well suited to display larger threedimensional works, and paintings can be hung on the white walls. The first exhibition is scheduled to take place in 2025.Spending a day at Ocarina House is experiencing a display of everchanging colours, shadows and reflections. In the morning, light enters in a controlled manner through the smaller openings onthe eastern facade and runs through thecentral space and its dividing wall. Azenithal opening illuminates the shower, and its curved wall registers the path of the sun during the day. In the afternoon, sunset colours pervade the space and reflect on the surfaces as shadows change. Even in the absence of direct sunlight, the interior displays a range of subdued greys, greens and blues as the sun goes down, reflections of the grass, trees and sky. The white paint of the back wall of the terrace and the metallic roof contrast with the deep greens of the adjacent forest and thedarkening blue of the evening sky, highlighting their presence.Building a house in the tropics, where there is some rain two days out ofthree, alsomeans careful consideration of waterand humidity. The thin concrete panels ofthe pitched roof are covered externally with bituminous aluminum for waterproofing. Its sculptural gutters and thediagonal concrete beam set water asidefrom the house to avoid damp walls. Humidity, nevertheless, can penetrate the house easily through openings and glazed surfaces. Even window frames, crafted by local metalworkers, are loose enough to allow the mist and thus the landscape to permeate the interior.Although it is a perfectly formed home, Ocarina House does not stand alone in the plot; it functions together with an existing cottage, bought by the family in the 1990s. Rodrigo dwells mostly in his recently built home, but he also spends long hours in the cottage, where his studio is located. The cottage contains a larger kitchen, used for catering when having guests over, and an additional bedroom and bathroom.Besides a house, the building was conceived as a gallery that could be used to exhibit the owners workMany of the new house elements and design choices are derived from shared family memories and experiences. The terrace was inspired by the cottages loggia; covered multifunctional spaces are common in local architecture. The grey epoxy paint of the floor comes from the familys first flat in Bogot, in a modernist building whose plans were copied by the local artist Jos Rodrguez Acevedo from an Auguste Perret building he lived in in Paris. In places, the epoxy paint has been scraped to reveal the iron oxide beneath known locally as the marble of the poor because of its low price and neat finishing. The intentional red abrasions reference the yarumo (Cecropia peltata) leaves, common in the artists work and painted on the cottage floor years ago.Luis Callejas relocated to Oslo in 2012, yet Scandinavian influences seem absent in the project. The closest link might be a boat, the architect humorously notes, as the house is tied to the terrain in a similar way a boat is moored in the harbour. With its thin walls, windows and roof, Ocarina House could never exist in Norway, he explains. Designing projects in Colombia from Oslo instead allows memories to gain relevance with distance, and influence his design process. The architect also believes that distance allows for taking significant technical risks and focusing on important details. This perspective resonates with hisfathers view: What I paint is what I remember, not what I see.Ocarina House absorbs its surroundings and extends outwards. The traditionally hard boundaries of the shelter dissolve. Instead, the building, the garden, the site,the forest, the view and the entire landscape collapse into one.
