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Just a Deck With a Pool and a View: Life’s Essentials

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Here’s a house from José Orrego Arquitecto that provides the basic needs of life:  “Casa Frente” faces the Pacific Ocean in the tightly packed resort club of Playa Las Gaviotas, south of Lima, Peru. It is essentially an open air living room in a climate that welcomes outdoor living, with the always changing vistas of a lovely ocean view…

…and a small exercise pool in which to bask and enjoy it to the utmost.

But the gloriously bland expanse of peaceful space here comes at a great cost back in the tiny house behind this room.

This completely open air living room comprises about a third of the lot size. But in order to provide the sublime escapism of such a spacious and enchanting spot …

…the architect has crammed the family’s needed 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms and kitchen and parking indoors for the family car into the tiniest space remaining on the shallow lot. Tellingly, there are no photographs taken so we can assess the success – or failure – of these tiny cramped rooms.

I can see why the choice was made. The back of the house, where you enter from the street makes it clear. This house is in a popular resort area where there will soon be a neighbor right next door. So there are not even any windows to these rooms.

It’s all about the front of the house. Whether that’s worth it, to suffer in tiny airless and viewless bedrooms, for one great escape, is up to the client.

I hope so. Perhaps all day the kids are all romping at the beach. Only at night, sunburned and exhausted do they return to conk out in the bedrooms, oblivious.

Would you do the same?