The project fundamentally poses a question: how do you make a house with a garden in a garden city?
For this reason, the proposal is for a house in which its structure blends in with the garden through the construction of an ambivalent metallic pergola of vegetation, allowing the garden to enter the interior of the house. On the other hand, with the construction of this vegetal pergola, the house is freed from the condition of a finished object because it will be able to grow as a garden does. The house is conceived as an unfinished project.
The layout of the house responds to the desire to enhance the crossed views from the interior rooms towards the open courtyards in the garden resulting from the setback between the habitable modules that integrate the building. These are juxtaposed transversally to the dominant dimension of the plot, each one of them defined by the relationship between the 4x15 m slabs.
The load-bearing structure is formed by a series of metal beams supported on metal pillars also arranged longitudinally on the plot. Of the six roof slabs, three are supported on the beams and three are suspended. The height of the roofs allows light and zenithal views to enter even the most internal areas of the house. The generous height of the beams contributes to greater privacy, making it difficult to see the whole complex from the upper floors of the neighbouring buildings.
The system of vertical enclosures of exposed brickwork consolidates privacy with respect to the neighbours and also between the parts of the house which, due to their position, face each other. In addition, as their position does not coincide with the limits of the slabs and roofs, interior-exterior transition spaces are generated, enriching and singularising the relationship between the different areas and the garden. This brickwork undergoes folds and interruptions in its course, exposing other layers such as the cork thermal insulation.
The perimeter fence of the plot is made up of a buried concrete base from which metal pillars emerge to guide large ceramic pieces supported on them. The absence of contact between these pieces produces a relief effect on the heavy nature of the ceramic, and even more so if we take into account that in this case a large format panel is used. The result is an economical design of ‘prefabricated’ construction to cover a significant length of perimeter. With this solution it is also possible to comply with the regulations. The fence can be considered as a lattice.
Ceramic tiles are also used in the interior of the house, with a single 30x60 cm porcelain tile in greenish grey being chosen for the flooring throughout the house. It is made up of garden patches of different proportions, emphasising the dissolution of the space towards the outside. As the pavement goes beyond the enclosing limits, the house appropriates garden patches of different proportions, emphasising the dissolution of the space towards the outside. The same ceramic tile becomes the cladding of the interior vertical walls, as if the floor were folded up to climb up the walls, reaching different heights to form a plinth, a fireplace base, or an entire surface in the bathrooms and kitchen.
The use of ceramic in the project is accentuated by the nostalgic connotation that this material has with the person for whom the house is being built, given that he dedicated an important part of his professional life to working in a vault. This condition characterised the application of ceramic components as a personal requirement of the client. In Garden House 03, ceramics not only physically constructs the project but is also the building material for reconstructing fragments of nostalgia.
