A work from the same period, the home of Mercedes Vial de Larraín in Requínoa (1942) designed in conjunction with Mario Pérez de Arce, incorporates the spatial organization of the traditional countryside and city houses. Both present a system of courts to accommodate different functions. In this house the layout has an unprecedented ease and shift of its cross shaped volumes which also clearly separate the different functions in open areas; here they are not closed but open onto the landscape. No lines of symmetry or reference to classical typologies are present. Construction systems and materials are local. They originate in the real and concrete situations in which the project is done. This work, despite the simplicity of its façades, the lack of architectural significance in its time or latter criticism, is a sign of the new originality, the new way to design. Both houses are previous to his direct experience of the Modern Movement, while he was first doing his scholarship at Harvard and later working in California (1942-1945). Back in Chile, Emilio Duhart was commissioned to design two paired houses for Francisco Pinto Santa Cruz, on Pocuro Street in Santiago (1945). It is evident in their aesthetics the influence by Gropius who had been his teacher. They have an empathy with the residences the master performed among his first works in the United States. The houses are governed by an isotropic structural system of great simplicity. Their facades appear to rely on a direct expression of the reinforced masonry construction system, simple stretches of walls and panels confined between beams and columns. The roofing is a simple wooden beam layout finely displayed in the eaves. The result could be defined as the consecration of an earthquake resisting aesthetic, an inherent problem of our country. This simplicity produces an image of elegance, suggesting a selection of means of expression applied with restraint and a certain sternness which seemed most appropriate. Nothing is superfluous and this economy of means highlights and makes its elements precious, sublimating their materialness. This aesthetic was used by several architects of his generation and the paired houses were an excellent example. Unfortunately they were recently demolished.
Planos originales casas en calle Pocuro / Original plan paired houses on Pocuro Street.
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