hinge – July 2019

hinge 275_40

<QSPKFDU
GJMF
°
FDVBEPS>

Photography by Jag Studio and Andres Villota

Another evocative house in a beautiful location. In a quiet chorale of

sympathetic materials – concrete, stone, timber, veneer, rammed-earth walls –

RAMA Studio has provided a whole lot of reasons for the owners to be here as

much as possible, even though it is officially a ‘weekend’ house. Casa Lasso is

also a building that aims to escape the bounds of specific time; it is traditional

yet modern, innovative yet precedent-affirming. Every piece of it is familiar, and

yet all the bits add up to something new.

Casa Lasso is an ‘indigenous’ construction, happy to lean on local building

skills and labour to come to physical fruition, and to utilise materials readily

available nearby. It feels ‘passive’ in the best sense. Five principal walls of

suggestive, taupe-toned rammed earth start the diagram and lay out the plan.

These support the huge, angled shed roof that dominates the elevations and

section. The walls are all parallel, oriented to protect against prevailing winds,

such that they also present a somewhat opaque external character to the

world. They offer thermal insulation, being 40-centimetre thick each; with

buttresses, double that. The latter additionally help to organise some of the

built-in furniture items in the house, such as a series of fold-down bunk beds

and closets, kitchen cabinetry, and so forth.

The living room is near the centre of the plan, adjacent to a kind of internal

courtyard room featuring a fireplace. This space acts as the heart of the

diagram, and most of the other spaces revolve around it. The floor here is

recessed slightly, to emphasise its separate status, and link it to an idea of

‘campfire’ settlement. The other, secondary, spaces are formed as areas

rather than rooms. Pivoting or sliding panels may form sub-spaces as needed,

letting Casa Lasso deform itself depending on who is there to use it. Those

external edges which are glazed can open it up in the warm season to the

green landscape all around it... or pull inward for cosiness come winter. The

ample wood surfaces seem to evoke warmth when needed, or cool shade in

Ranchos San Jose, Lasso, Cotopaxi, Ecuador

RAMA Studio

Casa Lasso