At the Chilean South, 700 kilometers from Santiago, and 110 kilometers of the city of Temuco, towards the Andes Mountains, the Conguillio National Park is found at the bottom of the Llaima volcano. In the heart of the park, is located "La Baita", a small meeting place for guests of an ecotourism center of the same name.

Because of the site's considerable distance to our office in Santiago and the rural nature of it, the first idea upon developing the assignment was to design a constructive system that was simple enough to be executed by local constructors and easy to be supervised from the distance.

With that in mind and the fact that 3.6 meters long raw Coihue wood planks were produced 20 kilometers away from the site, the design for the new facades of the existing lodge and all the new rooms were developed based on these planks dimensions. A 2"x10" section was defined for the project and a horizontal overlap of them established, to design a wall system that contains an insulation board in the center of it and is connected with only hex-head cap screws from the outside. The result of this system is a composed wall that functions as cladding, insulation and structure at the same time. The interior planks are supported on piles and the outside ones compress the insulation and brace the building.