About 3 kms away from the city center, distanced from the urban grid, stands the Casino and Hotel Ovalle, founding a citadel in the middle of the valley of the Limarí. As well as the ancient inhabitants of the valley settled to the interior of the gullies; real cracks that striped the central plateau of the valley, this intervention aims to constitute a new gully on this new site. This crack seeks to give refuge through its nooks, which generate a sequence of indoor and outdoor spaces that are hidden from the outside traffic and tracks, favoring the calm and rest.
A large perimeter stone pirca delimits the living space of this new citadel. On it lie the volumes that contain the various components of the architectural program forming a squared floor plan, which cuts through diagonally, forming the central crack of convergence. Making it seem as if this monolithic and hermetic volume was carved from the inside toward the outside, taking place through the stone materials, generating a crack and leaving the perimeter uncarved. Except from the hotel, all other buildings are quite airtight, with walls veneered in stone found in the surroundings, giving a vernacular sense, and referring to the rocky walls of the gullies of the valley of the Limarí.
About 3 kms away from the city center, distanced from the urban grid, stands the Casino and Hotel Ovalle, founding a citadel in the middle of the valley of the Limarí. As well as the ancient inhabitants of the valley settled to the interior of the gullies; real cracks that striped the central plateau of the valley, this intervention aims to constitute a new gully on this new site. This crack seeks to give refuge through its nooks, which generate a sequence of indoor and outdoor spaces that are hidden from the outside traffic and tracks, favoring the calm and rest.
A large perimeter stone pirca delimits the living space of this new citadel. On it lie the volumes that contain the various components of the architectural program forming a squared floor plan, which cuts through diagonally, forming the central crack of convergence. Making it seem as if this monolithic and hermetic volume was carved from the inside toward the outside, taking place through the stone materials, generating a crack and leaving the perimeter uncarved. Except from the hotel, all other buildings are quite airtight, with walls veneered in stone found in the surroundings, giving a vernacular sense, and referring to the rocky walls of the gullies of the valley of the Limarí.