The decisions taken in the design were the reaction to an accident. It was created for an artist couple: he works with paper, engravings and digital publishing; she, with enamelled ceramic. They had previously been living together in a big old house on the side of a hill, but it was destroyed during the earthquake that devastated central Chile in 2010. Resistance is not only opposition to a force, but also tolerance, patience, being strong-willed. For things to last, for them to withstand the weight of time, they must suffer; the question was to what extent this tension should be made visible. The house is a vertical structure with a small rectangular (1:2) floor plan. An almost blind plinth of concrete sealed with asphalt is used to embed the house into the terrain. From this plinth emerge six steel 250 x 250 x 8 mm columns. This rigid-frame structure defines six equal rooms. At the center of gravity of the floor, the crossbeams are duplicated in order to create a vertical circulation in which the 45º intersecting nodes are bracing squares and double-landing steps. The steel components have been fireproofed and brightly enamelled with a coarse grain. Too thick to be of steel, too thin to be of concrete, the black structure frame seems awkward when we consider the size of the volume it supports.