Soul House
Soul House is a refuge nestled in the heart of the Mindo Valley, grounded in the atmospheric and material conditions of its surroundings, as well as the symbolic world its inhabitants have shaped to narrate their lives. Geometry is employed to order every element, inside and out, proposing a microcosm articulated as an opaque interior, veiled from the exterior. Symmetrical in both axes, the house envisions a duality between body and atmosphere, matter and mood.
It simultaneously embodies symbolic resonance and material logic. At its core, a transversal void opens the house to the landscape, anchored by a luminous volume placed at the geometric center. This transparent skylight captures the shifting sky, becoming a silent witness to its movement when the house turns inward and withdraws from the world.
The house is organized around the idea of enabling two fully independent environments. A set of central sliding panels allows the interior to be divided into two disconnected volumes, offering its inhabitants the possibility of retreating into one section or the other of this singular, expansive room. This spatial flexibility responds to the need for intimacy within a shared domesticity. At the same time, the house seeks to minimize its impact on the surrounding ecosystem. To that end, a rainwater collection system was designed to irrigate the adjacent gardens, complemented by a treatment system for wastewater. This system, relying on specific plant species and bacteria, quietly labors to return water to the earth in the least invasive way possible.
The construction system emerges from two lineages: the rudimentary wooden structures found on-site and Jean Prouvé’s prefabricated houses. These references guided the adoption of a repetitive post and beam framework, resilient to lateral forces and simple to assemble.
At the center stands a solitary column, its fragility accentuated by the skylight above, a gesture that echoes Kazuo Shinohara’s conception of structural elements as devices of both stability and poetic singularity. Light and gravity behave as one in the center of this room. The lucernary releases the central column from its structural obligations, allowing it to exist as a symbol rather than a support. In doing so, it marks the precise center of a landscape no longer found, but created, an interior horizon framed by the house itself.
The structural assemblage was crafted by local artisans who, through mockups of every joint, developed the project detail by detail. The confrontation between the envisioned design and the contingencies of construction, budget constraints, unforeseen conditions, unfolded into a layered complexity of details, enriching the house beyond its original proposition.
