El Retiro - Long House

In the mountains of Antioquia, Colombia, Luis Callejas and Charlotte Hansson of LCLA Office have created a retreat that treats landscape not as backdrop, but as collaborator. Known as El Retiro, the project consists of two modest dwellings—a partially sunken Long House and a raised Square House—designed in dialogue with the steep slope and shifting climate of their high-altitude site.

The Long House burrows into the terrain, anchored by a retaining wall that makes the building feel sheltered, grounded, almost introverted. Its counterpart floats above the hillside, lifted on slender supports, and opens itself to light, air, and panoramic views. Together, they form a duality: one dwelling immersed in earth and shadow, the other in elevation and exposure.

Material continuity binds the pair. Board-formed concrete, stainless-steel detailing, and custom window frames appear in both structures, giving them a shared language even as their spatial characters diverge. Between them lies a garden that is more than ornament: planted with species evocative of alpine vegetation - orchids, bromeliads, high-mountain grasses - the landscape architecture extends and amplifies the architecture itself.

Despite their small footprints (75 m² and 60 m²), the houses feel expansive, thanks to the interplay of terraces, gardens, and carefully framed vistas. The project emphasizes not scale, but atmosphere: the cool containment of a half-buried dwelling versus the breezy openness of a home perched above the slope. In this sense, El Retiro is less about two houses than about two climates, two moods, two ways of inhabiting a mountain.

Awarded Wallpaper’s “Best Retreat in the World” in 2022, the project stands as a meditation on how modest architecture can achieve richness through its relationship with land, light, and vegetation. Callejas and Hansson offer not just buildings, but a way of living with the mountain itself - sometimes rooted, sometimes lifted, always attuned to place.