This Glass-and-Steel Prefab Home in Santiago Is Based on an Actual Greenhouse
Architect Max Núñez translated an award-winning design for plants into his family home with two airy volumes topped by arched roofs.
A striking greenhouse on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile, with a double-vaulted ceiling of glass bricks earned architect Max Núñez a 2022 nomination for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize. It also sparked an architectural inquiry: Could the concept be adapted for domestic life? "That was a house for plants, but the spatial quality was so interesting that I thought it would be nice to test it as a house for people," he says. Those people, it turned out, would be himself and his wife, Emilia Müller, a textile and clothing curator at Santiago’s National History Museum, as well as their daughters, ages 9 and 12.