In June 2014, Marike Therry, Christophe Cormy Donat, Lou Pelosoff, Selma Zoubeidi  and Clément Forest master students from Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture (ESA) in Paris, traveled to Máncora, in the north of Peru, to realize a housing project developed during their semester in Fabienne Bulle's workshop. In a few weeks, they treated, cut and assembled hundreds of pieces of bamboo to build an adaptive home for a local family.

Anghelina, 5, has cerebral palsy, which slows her mobility and speech. In a developing urban area north of Máncora, she lived with her parents in a makeshift shelter,  comprised of only one windowless room. Her father Nelson, a mason, actively participated in the construction of the new family home, comprised of nearly 300 bamboo stems.

The project, called “Casa Piel,” the “house skin,” proposes a new kind of space, more open and in communication with the outdoors. The house is modeled after an inverted patio: “a box in the box.” The house is surrounded by a pergola-structure that creates shadows conducive to a microclimate, to temper the tropical heat.

The exterior structure functions as a filter of dust, light and heat. The secondary, smaller structure inside protects from the rain and isolates, mainly, the rest space. The habitat is sequenced into three pieces: the intimate area with two bedrooms and a bathroom/kitchen in a small, waterproof interior, and the living room,  which is covered but open on the patio. This semi-interior living space covers 30% of the built surface of the building.