Excerpt: Casa Wills, designed by Yemail Arquitectura, perched on the edge of a hill overlooking Cota Valley, embodies simplicity and restraint. Rooted in the ethos of “dispensing with the unnecessary,” it revisits the primitive promise of living in a cabin. Elevated on stilts and shaped by the undulating terrain, its wooden form aligns with the landscape, an orthogonal volume that balances shelter, openness, and a quiet dialogue with nature.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] A cabin stands on the edge of a hill overlooking the Cota Valley, a municipality in the Bogotá savanna, at an altitude of 2,566 meters above sea level.
The house has its origins in the story of another built in 2007 in Sisga, which served as our office’s founding project: a butterfly-cut cabin built with the offcuts discarded by sawyers when cutting down a pine forest. The desire to dispense with the unnecessary is the common thread that connects the questions of then with those of now, and as a whole with that appreciation of primitive life that lies in the promise of living in a cabin.
The house is located in front of a forest that protects it from the winds coming down from the east and extends in an orthogonal volume facing west and the distant views. The undulating terrain dictates that the utmost care is taken to build on stilts.
The spaces are concentrated in a molded bar with features that define interior comfort and the relationship with the immediate ground. At the ends, the bedrooms are topped by boxes containing closets, providing privacy and depth to the modulated wooden windows, which owe much to Japanese architecture.
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