Citic Turns a 1929 Kulczewski House Into a 'House for Conversation'

Citic has transformed a 1929 house by architect Luciano Kulczewski into Casa Emilio Delporte, a 140-square-meter regeneration project the firm describes as a "house for conversation." The building sits within the Arturo Prat Cooperative Housing in Providencia, Santiago, and the renovation was completed in 2022. Ignacio Squella photographed the finished project.

The Santiago-based firm frames the work as what it calls "an architectural journey rooted in the biology of love." In the architects' text, they write that Casa Emilio Delporte recognizes "that a true home is a dwelling in harmony between its inhabitants and the ecological niche that embraces them."

That's a dense phrase, but it points somewhere concrete. The design treats the house not as an object to be restored but as a relationship to be repaired—between the people inside it and the place that holds them.

What does the project change?

The most practical answer: a 93-year-old structure by one of Chile's notable early modern-era architects keeps functioning as a home rather than fading into obsolescence. Kulczewski designed the original house in 1929, and Citic's intervention regenerates it for contemporary living without erasing its history.

The program refocuses the house around talk. The architects' guiding concept—a "house for conversation"—suggests interiors organized to bring people together rather than to separate them into private cells.

The supply chain behind the regeneration

The project's manufacturer list reads as a map of its technical priorities:

• CHC and MADESUR — construction and surfacing
• VELUX Group — daylighting, likely roof windows that lift natural light into the 140-square-meter plan
• BIOAISLÁN — bio-based insulation, consistent with the project's ecological framing
• LEDSTUDIO — artificial lighting
• MK — fittings and hardware

The presence of BIOAISLÁN, a name that signals biological insulation, aligns with the architects' stated ambition of harmony between dwelling and ecological niche. It's a small detail, but it shows the rhetoric matched the specification.

Why Kulczewski's house matters

Luciano Kulczewski's 1929 design belongs to the Arturo Prat Cooperative Housing, a planned residential ensemble in Providencia. Regenerating a unit within such a cooperative is a different task from renovating a standalone house: the building carries obligations to its context and its neighbors.

Citic's approach—calling the result a dwelling "in harmony between its inhabitants and the ecological niche that embraces them"—positions the renovation as a model for how Santiago's early 20th-century housing stock might be updated. The firm completed the work in 2022, and Ignacio Squella's photographs document the result.

For a nearly century-old house in one of Santiago's central communes, the project makes a quiet argument: that regeneration, not replacement, can keep historic housing alive—and talking.