Although it’s located in Chile some 270 kilometers north of Santiago, the scrub coastal shelf hugging the Pacific where the B8 house was built is strikingly reminiscent of Baja. Indeed, the little bay below B8 resembles the topography near Cuatro Casas and the Boat Ranch, though I guess that could be said of a thousand other bays along the western coast. The effect is one of familiarity — the saline breeze, the watercolor sky, the laser stars at night.

But you don’t see houses like this in Baja. Huentelauquen, a tiny fishing village, is home to a number of architect-designed retreats, all of which are modern, spare, and low, perhaps as a bulwark against the powerful and frequent local winds. B8 was drafted for simplicity and flexibility — the walls are made of moveable glass, and living space is defined by where you move the furniture and which walls are left open and which are closed. No doubt that must create some wind-tunneling, but still, there’s a strong sense of openness and interplay with nature. And it’s that intertidal zone between inside and outside where a structure comes alive, where you create memories that you feel, not that you think.

Architect: 56-02

Photos: Alejandro Gandarillas

Weekend Cabin isn’t necessarily about the weekend, or cabins. It’s about the longing for a sense of place, for shelter set in a landscape…for something that speaks to refuge and distance from the everyday. Nostalgic and wistful, it’s about how people create structure in ways to consider the earth and sky and their place in them. It’s not concerned with ownership or real estate, but what people build to fulfill their dreams of escape. The very time-shortened notion of “weekend” reminds that it’s a temporary respite.