One of the main challenges was getting the house to establish a very close relationship with the garden, so that one was an extension of the other and vice versa. Without this not depending on the inevitable, and so recurring glass locks, they wanted, and we wanted, walls. A walled house in a garden for art collectors. The proposal seeks to find the balance between placing the greatest number of pieces on the ground floor and keeping the garden sufficiently free of buildings. This is made with a volumetric composition of three boxes scattered around the plot, almost aligned and rammed to the north, generating the wider outdoor area to the south. The interstices generated between the boxes are covered, creating two sheltered areas completely open to the garden, which are closed with large folding windows. Spaces with a very different atmosphere to the interior rooms of the 'boxes'; corresponding more to the world of the garden than that of the house.
Few commissions start like this, that is, with the owners giving us a list of the wishes and expectations they had for their new home. The usual case is a more specific list of the wishes and values that we as architects must endorse, often secretly, in the homes we design and build, than of the 'usual' ambitions of couples who face this unknown challenge. These lists are always well intentioned but are often incomplete. A start that burdened us with responsibility, but an excellent start.
The plot, located in a residential neighbourhood of Sant Cugat, contained enough good attributes to become a main argument for the house. Thus, one of the main challenges was to get the house to establish a very close and essential relationship with the garden, so that one was the extension of the other and vice versa, and that this did not depend on the inevitable, often disproportionate, and so recurring glass-lined locks: they wanted, and we wanted, walls. A walled house in a garden for art collectors.
For all this, from the beginning, the proposal tries to find the balance between placing the greatest number of pieces on the ground floor and keeping the garden sufficiently free of buildings. This is made concrete with a volumetric composition of three boxes scattered around the plot, almost aligned and rammed to the north, generating the wider outdoor area to the south. The first box, to the east, contains the children's area, with three individual bedrooms upstairs and a common study downstairs. The second, central, houses the main part of the house: the kitchen, a room of almost thirty square metres and four metres high presided over by a large fireplace. The third box, to the west, contains the parents' area, with the bedroom at garden level and the study on the first floor.
The interstices generated between the three boxes are covered, creating two sheltered areas completely open to the garden in a north-south direction, which are closed with large folding windows. Spaces with a very different atmosphere to the interior rooms of the 'boxes'; more of the world of the garden than of the house. The first of the interstitial areas, between the children's area and the kitchen, serves as a hall. The second interstitial space, between the parents' sector and the larger kitchen, is the living room, but is an unusual room: it is a temperate greenhouse in winter and a cool porch in summer.
The whole house is surrounded by the garden, the widest part of which is to the south. The chamfer area (west), geometrically very sharp, houses the vegetable garden and a small swimming pool. To the north, following the street, the distance between the plant fence and the volume of the house varies between 5 and 6 metres and expands to 9 in the (uncovered) parking lot, which is connected by a 3-metre step in width, parallel to the east fence, with the main garden to the south. The interstitial spaces of the house (living room and entrance) become connecting porches between the front and back gardens of the house.
Volumetrically, the house is made up of three exposed brick cubes, parallel to the back street and with variable heights that, despite having many windows, of variable size depending on the interior uses, are eminently massive. On the contrary, the interstitial spaces between the cubes have an 'ethereal' corporeality, covered by a slab and with glazed façades of folding wooden balconies, in fact, with the doors closed the space becomes an outside porch.
In terms of materiality, the house is made of double-leaf load-bearing walls, exposed masonry on the outside and painted white on the inside. The joinery is all wood and the windows that require it will have solar protection through the traditional external wooden roller blinds. The floors will be continuous concrete, with underfloor heating.
The house is air-conditioned using geothermal energy and underfloor heating, which in the summer will only cool slightly, avoiding the need to dehumidify using ducted air.
