The project had a limited budget and a rather complex structure that tested the creativity of the architects. “To save on the costs of the foundation, we located the supports of the house where the bedrock was highest,” BeAr explains. The finishes had to be inexpensive while the house has a plain exterior. “For us it was important that this felt like an ‘honest’ house, that it isn’t pretending to be something that it isn’t. The wood elements were very important and we selected the materials and the different pieces after a lot of thought. For example, it was important to us to use rough sawn wood on the porches instead of laminated wood,” Berasategui says.

The concrete bases of the structure were located at the points where the bedrock is highest, reducing the cost of building the house’s foundations.

The interior of the house has an atmosphere like that of a log cabin where wood is the main element and everything is reduced to the bare essentials. While it appears simple, every aspect of the house was very much calculated and designed.

However, when you explore the house, it in no way feels like corners have been cut. “The real luxury of this house is space. It has ceiling heights of almost 16 feet and a lot of natural light coming in from the west and from above. That’s something that’s hard to find in the city,” he adds.

The long house is laid out almost like a large fluid space with all the different areas connected to each other except for the bedroom and part of the bathroom. The owner, who likes to entertain, wanted a large kitchen and a big sink, which the studio created with quarried stone. “He doesn’t have a dishwasher because he finds the routine of washing up relaxing,” explains Berasategui. The kitchen, on the west side, was created with different modules of water-resistant MDF, an inexpensive but very moisture-resistant material.

The kitchen units, divided into different modules and interspersed with the house’s windows, are covered with water-repellent MDF in an olive green. It’s an inexpensive material that is still very resistant to moisture.

To hide the kitchen island’s extraction fan, BeAr designed a ladder-shaped shelf which also functions as a spice rack.

“We gave the kitchen island a more playful design, a kidney-bean shape. As the extractor had to be under it, we created a kind of red stepladder to hide it and which can double as a spice rack,” he says.