It was a dark and stormy night when architect Guillermo Acuña first glimpsed a narrow strip of land while looking for a place to dock his sailboat in Chile’s Chiloé Archipelago. When he got a closer look the next morning, he was intrigued by the changing landscape and its location on the Bay of Rilán, in the country’s southern region.

Twice a day, with the rising of the tide, Lebe becomes an island, cut off from the Isla Grande de Chiloé of which it is part. Despite the region’s harsh weather—Charles Darwin described it as “detestable” in winter and “only a little better” in summer—Guillermo had a vision for a simple retreat on the water.

The Santiago native has known Chiloé since the mid-1970s. Though the archipelago lies just off the mainland, it had long felt like a world of its own. “Now there are airports, ferries, and motorways,” he says. “It’s very well connected.” Later, while in architecture school at Chile’s Pontificia Universidad Católica, Guillermo got hands-on experience with timber construction when he rebuilt a home for his father on the island of Quihua, off Chiloé’s southern coast.

After purchasing Lebe—all 12 acres of it—Guillermo began by building a barn-like boathouse in 2013 that featured a nearly 1,000-square-foot living space on the top floor. The project has since evolved to encompass several buildings, with Guillermo regularly making the nearly 700-mile trip to Chiloé from the Chilean capital, where he runs his architecture studio, Guillermo Acuña Arquitectos Asociados.

Construction was overseen first by a friend, Chilote architect and builder Magdalena Donoso, and later by a pair of local master carpenters, the father-and-son team of Lalo and René Miranda.

Guillermo followed the boathouse with a two-story, 650-square-foot cabin for himself and visiting family and friends, with communal spaces upstairs and three bedrooms and a bathroom downstairs. Next came an 800-square-foot, three-bedroom cabin for Roberto Pons, who is now a partner on the island.

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Guillermo then remodeled the boathouse, adding an exterior staircase on one side and dividing the glass-walled upper level into a pair of guest wings. No longer used for storing seacraft, the boathouse is where everyone gathers to cook, eat, lounge, and shoot pool. The entire space is painted bright red, echoing the vivid chilco flowers, or hummingbird fuchsia, that flourish in spring and summer.

Pathways and elevated boardwalks connect the buildings, which sit at the water’s edge, their interiors minimally furnished and their all-windowed, high-ceilinged upper floors offering expansive views of the fjords. Guillermo has described the project as “a ship on land”—modest structures just comfortable enough for short stays yet designed to beckon visitors out to sea.

Stylistically, they complement Chiloé’s tradition of wood architecture, seen in the 19th-century palafitos, or stilt houses, that populate the port town of Castro. Initially, Guillermo used native wood, but he now relies solely on laminated and certified radiata pine, a renewable, fast-growing plantation species readily available in the region. “There are very few forests left in Chile,” he explains. “To build with native wood is for me unsustainable and irresponsible.”

The architect has dedicated himself to rehabilitating and preserving the natural resources of his tiny corner of Chiloé, whose ecosystem has been ravaged by Chile’s booming aquaculture industry and by the extraction of Sphagnum peat moss from its fragile wetlands, a critical source of fresh water. “The cultural poverty prevailing in the country means that it is going through an extremely delicate environmental moment,” Guillermo says. “One of the world’s most extensive archipelagos is hanging by a thread.”

Today Guillermo divides his time between Santiago and Chiloé and spends the summer months on Lebe. Life there revolves around the weather. “From May to September, the days are very short, which promotes sleep and reading,” he says. “Between October and April the days are very long—sixteen hours of light—and we spend our time on the beach, with friends, and sailing.”

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Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Guillermo Acuña Arquitectos Asociados

Built-in furnishings: Lalo and René Miranda