LAMA Pavilion / Pezo von Ellrichshausen

LAMA Pavilion / Pezo von Ellrichshausen - Exterior Photography, Forest + 26

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Text description provided by the architects. 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 look at the Andes Mountain Range, hidden behind the native forest.

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Its format is that of a slender volume, formed in turn by two towers: the lower one with an eave that duplicates its roof, the upper one with a terrace that duplicates its floor.

LAMA Pavilion / Pezo von Ellrichshausen - Exterior Photography

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The floor and ceiling are a horizontal slab projected halfway up the elevation – a thin cantilevered plane that extends towards the four cardinal points – it has the difficult function of containing a shallow rainwater pond.

LAMA Pavilion / Pezo von Ellrichshausen - Exterior Photography, Windows

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Thus, 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, that suggests the presence of the lower tower.

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And even more difficult: like a permanent cloud, the slab throws a dense and compact shadow on the lower tower, and even, on occasions, the rain falls all around the perimeter due to the overflow of the small pond.

LAMA Pavilion / Pezo von Ellrichshausen - Interior Photography, Column, Beam

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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 helical staircase that revolves around a continuous mural of vines, both living and painted, that describe a selection of thirty interconnected native flowers on the same tree.

LAMA Pavilion / Pezo von Ellrichshausen - Interior Photography, Windows

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After the platform, a frail wooden ladder allows one to climb 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, and with a hearth that, at the appropriate distance, could turn the entire tower into an antiquated chimney.