Ubicación y plantas originales Casa Ziegler. / Original site plan and floor plan of Ziegler House.
The topology of the project around a central circulation allows openness to the landscape on all fronts. The second floor, which functions as a kind of piano nobile , permits rising each day and watching the distant hills, a solution for a context of gardens and trees that tend to create an enclosed space at ground level in the neighborhood where it is located. The intention of connecting with the geography of the place is evident in the graphics inserted into the floor on all levels to pinpoint the location of the North, and which not only identify the cardinal points but also the direction in which to find the main hills of the mountain ranges surrounding the city. The work with the materials of the piece is again based on the theme of reinforced masonry and an isotropic structural system. The concrete of the columns, beams and slabs is left exposed and regulates the composition. Brick masonry stretches completely disappear to give way to wooden boxes that function as bow windows or balconies. The windows are inserted into the panels of unreinforced masonry devoid of minor columns or beams that would break into the continuity of the material, and an arched lintel keeps the unity of the bricks. In this manner the simple rhythm of the concrete structure remains clear and without interruption governing the façades and expressing the concept of confined masonry. Within this box concept, the placement of a terrace was not a trivial matter. The solution of a wooden construction which extends from the main structure suspended by cables became clear. The proposal works as a musical structure, a theme and its variations: in this case, the topic of the boxes and its different shapes. The terrace could have been a simple horizontal plane, but to follow the game eloquently, it adds coronation elements that build a virtual box. The economy of resources is evident. The interior floors are baked clay tiles, as are
the bricks in the walls. Coupled with natural wood furniture, doors, windows and boxes, and the exposed concrete, he reduces the palette to only these textures. I should also mention a divertimento: for the first time the architect attempts here to build a reinforced concrete door, a resource he uses later in many parts of the United Nations building in Santiago. The analysis of these features has something of a dissection and cannot convey the vivid and warm feeling produced by the combination of these white masonries, clay floors, exposed concrete and wood. Nor can it convey the sense of proportion and proper scale of its spaces. Emilio Duhart designed other houses in which the form of expression relates to a more common language of the architecture of the times, white colored volumes with inserts of natural materials, often in exposed concrete. Sometimes his details reveal the influence of Le Corbusier: the use of the roof as a living space with a wooden deck for sunbathing or the large rain water draining gargoyles. In these houses elements of continuity in his work and an extension of past criteria and achievements are always present. One example is the house for the director of the L’Alliance Française School, which next to the already mentioned Corbusian items present an integration with the gardens similar to the house on Vaticano Street and a rotation of the spaces on the first floor, which distribute and order the views, as in the house in Requínoa. Like many architects, the design of houses had a special appeal for Emilio Duhart. The exchange of ideas with the client, when the caller was smart and empathy arose between them, made him spend too much time on some houses and the outcome in general was a financial loss. On more than one occasion it was significant and funded by the profits from other commissions.
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