A compact elevated shelter by Baquio Arquitectura has been put in on the slopes above Mindo, in Ecuador’s Chocó cloud forest. Dubbed Casa 6-3, the mission is a tiny timber retreat with a light-weight footprint, overlooking the encircling mountains and rainforest.
Perched above the bottom on a triangular wood help system, the Casa 6-3 cabin hovers over the hillside. The timber load-bearing system was particularly chosen for its financial benefits and ease of meeting on web site, taking into account its distant location. By elevating the construction off the bottom, the architects had been in a position to preserve the present pure panorama, limiting the cabin’s footprint on the positioning. As well as, the usage of light-weight supplies simplified transport and meeting.
Baquio Arquitectura
The timber body is wrapped in white polycarbonate thermoplastic, which permits pure daylight to filter into the inside areas of the cabin. Resulting from its semi-transparency, the facade invitations the shifting sky and the inexperienced hues of the encircling forest cover into the inside, creating an atmosphere that softens the road between in and out. Moreover, the selection to go together with this kind of prefabricated cladding helped maintain general prices comparatively low and scale back building time of the mission.
“The selection of the constructing envelope responds to a seek for breaking away from the rigidity of on a regular basis life,” Baquio Arquitectura tells New Atlas. “The usage of polycarbonate was not solely an environment friendly price range answer but additionally a strategic resolution to reinforce perceptual and sensory connection.”
Baquio Arquitectura
The A-framed cabin has been positioned in order that it factors towards the course of the mountains. The design features a sequence of easy shutters that open upward and outward, permitting pure gentle and recent air inside. Every opening shutter frames views in all instructions, making the inside areas really feel a part of the encircling panorama.
Contained in the cabin, the inside design has been saved to the naked minimal, that includes a steady floorplan with out the necessity for doorways. The cabin is provided with a easy compact timber kitchen, timber floorboards, a space-saving desk that folds away, a hidden mattress, full toilet, open dwelling area, and two giant out of doors terraces.
Whereas the cabin’s porous envelope maintains visible and acoustic connections to the forest, the architects have designed the dwelling so it might probably evolve right into a extra everlasting construction. To attain this, the outer cladding might be eliminated and changed with a extra sturdy materials. For instance, handled tropical hardwood, fiber‑cement, standing‑seam metallic or composite rainscreen panels would enable the tiny cabin to evolve from a brief shelter right into a extra everlasting and cozy dwelling.
Baquio Arquitectura
As is, Casa 6-3 does increase some sensible questions although. Translucent plastics utilized in a damp, excessive‑UV tropical setting are likely to degrade sooner, inflicting fading, lack of transparency, and enlargement with warmth in ways in which might undermine each gentle high quality and visible attraction. The very openness that binds the cabin to the panorama could show troublesome to reconcile with privateness and luxury wants throughout lengthy‑time period use, notably after darkish or in sustained rainfall. Whether or not the envelope can adequately buffer wind noise, wildlife sounds, and temperature swings additionally stay untested.
For now, Casa 6-3 stands as a concise prototype for a no-fuss light-weight mountain cabin, prioritizing minimal web site affect and direct engagement with the encircling pure atmosphere. Its lengthy‑time period success will rely upon how properly it weathers the local weather, and adapts to altering calls for.
Supply: Baquio Arquitectura through Designboom

