A Tree-Hugging Concrete Vacation House

Franz House is a vacation house from BAK Architects for a couple and their grown children in Mar Azul, Argentina.

Entirely concrete, an interior repeat of the exterior concrete stairs leads up the sleeping floor.

Set on a steep slope, the house centers around a double height foyer shared with four tall trees.

The attempt to minimaly disturb the tree-filled site led to a tall cube design, spliced into the slope.

The trees literally pierce the concrete roof in the second story.

The pierced idea is repeated in the way the concrete bench outside pierces the glass to become a bedside table indoors.

The heaviness of an entirely concrete house is opposed by surprisingly suspending the wall over the open space of glass.

Concrete forms a shelf above the bed.

On the outside of the house, this concrete internal shelf juts out to form a rain roof over the window.

A clerestory window is above a small concrete porch roof.

Similarly, bathroom shelving is formed of the same concrete.

Concrete is continued to form every kitchen bench and shelf too.

A concrete shelf extends the length of the living room, surrounding the wood stove and providing thermal mass to magnify the heat supply.

Even the dining table is formed of concrete.

Although concrete is an energy intensive building material, it can last a very long time (using an early form of concrete, the Roman viaducts are still with us).

So if all of the built-in furniture like this is also formed from concrete, then generations can eat from this table in this house, without buying and discarding hundreds of wooden tables over that time.