Architect Day: Mathias Klotz

GenCept

by GenCept | January 12, 2010

South American architect, with most of his works in his home country of Chile, Mathias Klotz started being recognized worldwide through his reputable and well established architecture.

Architect Day: Mathias Klotz

Photos from site mathiasklotz.com.

Mathias Klotz was born on April 13, 1965 in Vina del Mar, Chile. He started architecture school but was more interested in studying the Arts. He thought that a diploma in architecture would be better for his future than being an artist who could not produce anything useful.

When he finished his studies in 1982, he won right off the bat a contest to construct a house. Klotz, with no previous experience from working in other architect offices, designed three houses different from the rest. These houses caught the eye These homes caught the attention of people seeking the same peculiarities of the above: large spaces without many compartments.

Architect Day: Mathias Klotz
Casa Klotz, Tongoy, Chile

“I realised three houses that were a bit different from common houses because each of them was destined to one person only … I started to receive assignments from people who had seen them, and also assignments for houses with some peculiarity … So time passed and without even realising it, I was working as a professional architect.”

Influences

Growing up as an architect Mathias Klotz knew that there were few post modernists. The first examples of deconstructivism, appeared to him when he graduated. He considers the elements of Modernism correct and well adapted to modern life. He thought Post Modernism broke all these conceptions.

“So, what I think is that this kind of architecture is like a scale in balance among these elements: the rationality almost - how do you call it? - "fundamentalist" of the Modern Movement, and the extreme opposite which is the absolute formalism of Postmodernism, and it believes that the last one is closer to human beings.”

Architect Day: Mathias Klotz
Casa Muller, Chiloé, Chile

Works

Klotz seeks to work with the local technology of his works. The same happens with the materials, which are sometimes to be perceived as cheap or rare in other countries, but are the materials from the site, most available and used in old buildings.

This concern with the environment and especially with the local culture and history, as Chile is a very extensive territory, presents various types and materials and characteristics of each landscape.

“… for instance if you look at these my first houses - they have been published because they are made of fir wood, that is the most common wood in the world - they have been painted in white and they are in harmony with the landscape, where there are several white buildings nearby, and so on. At the same time in the South of the country there are my houses - the South of the country is much more wooded, and the wood is much better down there … But it's a mixture of assumptions, the technology available in an area and... the predominant architecture of the area itself.”