In design with nature: Chilean architect German del. Sol. develops structures in harmony with their surrounding landscapes.

• Author: Barraclough, Colin
• Position: Essay

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An hour's drive north of Santiago, the Viña Seña winery sits high in the Aconcagua Valley, its terraced slopes of cabernet sauvignon and merlot vines overlooking rose nurseries, orchards, and herds of Fresian cattle that speckle the valley floor. It is bounded to the west by 5,997 foot Cerro La Campana and to the north and south by the sheer-sided shoulders of Chile's coastal mountains, their scrubland scattered with large boulders and yellow-flowered espino trees. Far to the east, just visible on the horizon, is the soaring peak of 22, 841 foot Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas.

Still under construction, the vineyard's tasting room straddles a rocky outcrop, its wooden frame planted off-kilter, its interior painted a vibrant shade of sunflower yellow. Below, the vines curve around the natural form of the hillside, appearing to flow downwards where watercourses and gulleys descend from the mountain's higher reaches. Loose walls, formed from heaped boulders and topped with a single line of white concrete, snake across the land, picking out its subtle undulations.

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"Before, there was just one possible view from here, the obvious vista down the valley towards Aconcagua," says architect Germán del Sol, whose designs for Viña Seña's winery and storage vault are scheduled for completion in 2011, with an eight-cabin hotel to follow the year after. "The difficulty is that Aconcagua is just too far away to visualize properly: it makes sense only if you can imagine what it would be like close up. The terrace here lures the visitor outside, from where the nearby slopes are visible in great detail, something that allows one, in turn, to truly imagine Aconcagua."

Sure enough, from the tasting room's terrace, where giant buttresses of naked rock emerge from the mountainside beneath, and a brace of fugón fireplaces stand ready to ward off the evening chill, the eye is drawn--unbidden--to the nameless, nearby ridges and only then to Aconcagua's landmark peak. "In a sense, we have created a view that didn't exist," says Del Sol. "The building allows the view to happen."

Such a deceptively simple process of molding a building to its surroundings is typical of Del Sol. His work includes some of Chile's most idiosyncratic hotels, vineyards, and thermal spas, from Hotel Salto Chico in Patagonia and Hotel de Larache in the Atacama Desert--landmark projects built for Chile's Explora hotel group--to the Termas Geométricas, a stark hot spring complex in Villarrica National...