A house built into the ground, in a valley worth keeping

The purpose is not to add another building to a landscape that does not need one. It is to test whether a house can be almost invisible from the outside and still be full of light inside — and to document honestly what that takes: the excavation, the waterproofing, the drainage, the cost, the mistakes.

If it works, it becomes a place other people can one day stay in. If parts of it do not work, that will be published too.

Trevelin sits where the Andes stop being a wall and start being a valley. The town was founded by Welsh settlers of Y Wladfa and named in their language — tre (town) and felin (mill), the town of the mill. West of it the cordillera rises toward the Chilean border; north-west lies Los Alerces National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site protecting alerce trees older than most cities.

It is a place with weather worth building against: cold, clear winters, long dry summers, wind that arrives from the west. Earth-sheltered building is a direct answer to exactly that climate.

The working concept is a single-storey circular plan of roughly 250 m², set into a slope. Reinforced concrete retaining walls hold the earth back; 80–100 cm of soil is returned over the roof so the meadow continues across it. A glazed dome over a central courtyard brings daylight into the middle of the plan, while the downhill face opens fully to the valley.

The concept currently allows for three bedrooms, two bathrooms, an open kitchen and living space, technical and storage rooms, and covered parking. Every number here is a design intention, not a finished drawing — the concept will change as engineering begins, and the changes will be published.

Building into the ground is a thermal decision before it is an aesthetic one. Soil holds temperature: a buried envelope swings far less between a Patagonian August night and a February afternoon, which means less heating, less cooling, and less equipment.

The surface consequence matters just as much. The roof stays a meadow. Rainwater is collected rather than shed. Excavated material is reused on site instead of trucked away. From the ridge above, the house should read as a dome in the grass and nothing more.

The long-term intention is that this house becomes a place to stay — a small, single-property retreat rather than a hotel. There are no rooms to book, no dates, no prices, and no reservation system, because there is no building yet.

What exists today is the intention, stated openly so that the people following the project know where it is going.