Casa Asomada: Whale!'s Snake-Inspired Chilean House Eyes the Pacific

By Amara Osei

A snake, coiling and raising its head to study the horizon, is the design seed behind Casa Asomada, a 255 sq m holiday house by Chilean studio Whale! on a clifftop in Tunquén, on the country's coast.

The dark volume peeks over green foliage that shifts with the sea breeze. From a distance it reads as small — dwarfed by the Pacific and the sparsely built site. It isn't. Two interlocking volumes form a single shape that negotiates the plot's steep terrain and delivers a generous vacation home with long ocean views.

Whale!, a 2018 Wallpaper* Architects' Directory participant, has split the program cleanly. The first volume, entered through the main entrance, holds the shared spaces: kitchen, living room and dining room, plus a guest bedroom. These communal areas open onto a courtyard enclosed by concrete walls that shield it from the elements. The courtyard holds a barbecue and storage. Sensible. Windy clifftops punish the unprotected.

The second volume contains the private quarters. Two children's bedrooms sit on the lower level; a primary en suite bedroom for the parents sits above, with a shared bathroom nearby.

Why a snake?

The architects explain the archetypal form directly: a snake coils, lifts its head, looks into the distance.

"The house is conceived through a single gesture that articulates two distinct ways of relating to the territory. On the one hand, it retreats into the landscape, using the rock as shelter and protection. On the other, it emerges to look beyond, seeking to grasp the depth of the horizon," the architects said.

That double move — retreat and emerge — answers the site's two pressures at once. The rock shelters; the raised head claims the view.

How does one roof unify it?

The plan, the architects concede, sounds complicated. It synthesizes the site's level changes and its regulatory boundaries. But a continuous roof softens the whole assembly.

"Despite its apparent complexity, the plan – an architectural synthesis of the site's changes in level and its regulatory boundaries – is softened by a continuous roof that gently envelops the entire gesture. In doing so, the project becomes a single, quiet body: one that retreats, emerges and cautiously raises its head to look beyond and confirm what lies ahead," the architects conclude.

A single quiet body on a loud, windy site. That's the trick.

Casa Asomada joins a growing run of Chilean coastal houses that treat harsh terrain as a design brief rather than an obstacle — and Whale!'s serpent gesture suggests the studio will keep reading landscape before drawing plans.