Zonas de Caracas

RSN

This modern and elegant house was projected for the passionate orchid expert, explorer and naturalist Galfrid Keyworth Dunsterville (1905-1988). Under the title «The house on top of the mountain in the land of orchids», the house was reviewed by the Architectural Record magazine (June, 1962). Located in the outskirts of Caracas in a lot privileged with great views of the city and adjacent to a vertical brook with a dense tropical vegetation, the house, with a clear sense of horizontalness and great panoramic windows, was conceived bearing in mind that the culti-vation and investigation of orchids would be a fundamental part of its program. The house,possessing a great geometric neatness, is composed by three bodies (social area, bedrooms and services) articulated by the circula-tion nucleus. «The living and dining room take a setting turn towards a triple height space raised on the forest –the orchid room– creating a bordering situation of extreme beauty» (Niño Araque, William. El espíritu moderno (The modern spirit). 1950. Page. 170). It was on this house that Dunsterville, along forty years, studied and recollected 1.200 species of orchids, today published in the book «Las orquídeas ilustradas de Venezuela» (The illustrated orchids of Venezuela). The house resumes the architectonic spirit of the fifties, the German architecture of the vanguards, and comes close to the spatial neatness presented by classical references, such as the Fansworth house and the Barcelona Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe.