LOTE STUDIO Tucks a Low Earthen Beach House into the Coastal Scrub of Chile's Coquimbo Region

Jardinera House, completed in 2023 by LOTE STUDIO, sits on the coastal edge of Punta Hueso in Chile's Coquimbo Region. It is a 387 m² single-storey house built on a stated premise of minimal intervention on the land. Plenty of coastal houses claim that. Fewer of them actually look as though they could disappear into the scrub on an overcast day. This one nearly does.

The house is not interesting because it is modest. It is interesting because of where it puts the architecture. The enclosed volumes are kept low, plain and earth-coloured. Most of the design energy goes into the spaces between them: covered walkways, cane-shaded decks, planters and benches that turn the gaps into the main rooms. The result reads less like an object on a site and more like a cluster of walls and shade structures organised around how people actually spend a day by the sea.

Staying Below the Line of the Scrub

From a distance the house is mostly horizon. Flat roofs, sand-coloured plaster and a long single-storey profile keep it beneath the height of the native shrubs, so the sea and the sky stay in charge of the view. The chimneys are the only vertical punctuation, and they are small enough to read as domestic rather than monumental.

We think the decision to break the program into separate volumes matters more than the colour palette. A single 387 m² box would have been a wall against the landscape. Split into staggered pieces, the same area reads at the scale of the vegetation around it, and the scrub is allowed to run right up to the walls instead of stopping at a manicured edge.

The Gap as the Front Door

The most telling move is an absence. An open gap between the volumes frames the sea directly, so the first thing you understand about the house is the view it refuses to block. That gap is not leftover space; it is the organising idea, and the covered walkway that threads through it becomes the spine of daily movement.

The walkway itself is a lesson in restraint. Pale timber posts, a woven cane ceiling, an earthen wall with a bench set against it and a floor of white gravel. Nothing is applied for effect. In evening light the cane filters the sun into a soft texture, and at midday the same lattice over the deck throws a sharp pattern across the boulders and sand. The material is cheap and local in character, but it is doing real environmental work.

Shade as the Primary Room

On this stretch of coast, the most valuable space is not enclosed; it is shaded. The house acknowledges that with a sequence of outdoor rooms under reed-slatted roofs: a long dining deck with a timber table, a veranda that steps down into a sandy yard with cacti and a hammock, and a raised planter edged with built-in benches.

The planter is worth pausing on. Tall grasses sit at seat height, the pergola stripes the deck with shadow, and the ocean stays in the background. It is a small piece of landscape brought inside the architecture rather than kept outside it, and it suggests where the name Jardinera comes from. The garden is not decoration around the house; it is built into the furniture.

Living Rooms That Look Two Ways

Inside, exposed timber beams set a steady rhythm overhead, and woven pendant lamps carry the cane language of the exterior into the rooms. The living and dining spaces are oriented in two directions at once: a built-in sofa faces windows onto the hillside, while the lounge opens fully toward the sea.

That double orientation is a smart response to the site. A coastal house that only looks at the water can feel one-dimensional, and on grey days the hills offer a warmer, closer view. Here you can choose between the horizon and the slope depending on the light and the weather, which is a better reason to put windows somewhere than simply chasing the postcard.

Built-In Furniture and the Hearth

Much of the interior character comes from things that are built rather than bought. A plastered fireplace wall is flanked by arched built-in benches; a cushioned window seat sits beneath a large botanical panel; the kitchen uses weathered oak cabinets under a skylight and the same exposed beams that run through the rest of the house.

Built-ins matter in a house like this because they let the walls themselves become furniture. The arched benches beside the hearth thicken the plaster into something you can sit in, which suits a coastal climate where evenings can turn cool quickly. The fireplace is the counterweight to all the open decks: when the shade structures lose their purpose after sunset, this is where the house gathers.

Sleeping Rooms Without Ceremony

The bedrooms are plain in the best sense. A bunk room stacks grey-fronted berths with timber ladders against rough plaster; a smaller room repeats the idea with a single pale timber bunk and a side shelf; the main bedroom pairs a black rattan headboard with round pendants under the same beams.

Bunk rooms signal a house designed for groups, family and friends arriving for long weekends rather than a single couple. That program fits the clustered plan: shared outdoor rooms in the middle, compact sleeping spaces at the edges, and a mottled plaster finish throughout that will age comfortably with sand and salt rather than fighting them.

Plans and Drawings

The floor plan confirms what the photographs suggest: staggered single-storey volumes arranged around a central open space, with stone walls and existing trees and shrubs drawn as part of the composition rather than added afterward. The sections and elevations show flat roofs extended by pergola beams, large glazed openings and a stone-clad end volume, all following a gently sloping ground line instead of levelling it.

The wall section details are where the minimal-intervention premise becomes concrete. Discrete foundation footings, timber floor framing and layered insulated walls suggest a building that touches the ground at points rather than sitting on a continuous slab across the whole site. Next to it, a solid stone wall provides mass and a heavier edge. It is a clear division of labour: light construction where the house meets the land, heavier material where it needs to hold its ground.

Why This Project Matters

Coastal Chile is under steady pressure from second homes, and many of them treat the shoreline as a backdrop for a glass box. Jardinera House offers a different template. It keeps the enclosed area quiet, invests in shade, gaps and outdoor furniture, and lets the scrub continue to define the site. The house earns its view by not occupying all of it.

For designers, the takeaway is about where effort goes. LOTE STUDIO spends its attention on the in-between: the cane ceiling, the planter bench, the framed opening to the sea, the way a footing meets sloped ground. Those are not the elements that photograph as a dramatic silhouette, but they are the ones that shape how a holiday house is actually lived in, and how lightly it sits on a fragile coast.

Jardinera House by LOTE STUDIO. Location: Punta Hueso, Coquimbo Region, Chile. Area: 387 m². Year: 2023. Photography: Antonia Mardones Nally.

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