Architects: Pezo von Ellrichshausen Photography: Pezo von Ellrichshausen Construction Period: 2023 Location: Yungay, Perú
This solitary figure functions as a signal and as a viewpoint of the landscape (both interior and exterior). With a vertical sequence of rooms, it was built to overlook the Andes Mountain Range, hidden behind the native forest.
Its format is that of a slender volume, formed in turn by two towers: the lower one with an overhang that duplicates its roof, and the upper one with a terrace that duplicates its floor.
The floor and ceiling are a horizontal slab projected halfway up the elevation, a thin cantilevered plane that extends towards the four cardinal points, with the difficult function of containing a shallow rainwater pond.
Read MoreThus, this slab becomes a mirror that reflects the upper section of the tower, the sky, and the surrounding trees; but it also transfigures into a fictitious glass, into a transparency, suggesting the presence of the lower tower.
And even more difficult: like a permanent cloud, the slab casts a dense and compact shadow over the lower tower, and even sometimes the rain falls all around the perimeter due to the overflow of the small pond.
Paradoxically, the function of the viewpoint is reversed inside the tower. Instead of framing the sublime panorama, perhaps tempering an imposing presence, access to the suspended platform occurs through a spiral staircase that revolves around a continuous mural of vines, both live and painted, depicting a selection of thirty interconnected native flowers on the same tree.
After the platform, a feeble wooden ladder allows climbing up to a dark room with four peepholes, a sort of intricate camera obscura, which in turn serves as a passage to an open, overexposed roof, with a hearth that, at the proper distance, could turn the entire tower into an antiquated chimney.
Text provided by the architects.
