The extraordinary location on Almirante street, found in the elegant Justice district of Madrid, characterizes this early 20th century building.
The typology of dwelling with front of balconies towards the street and long depth part, illuminated through patios, was in its days very used in houses of all type in the city. When they reach larger dimensions, long corridor routes are created in order to communicate both ends of the building.
Controlling and reducing the routes inside the house were, from the very beginning, a fundamental part of the proposal; as a result, rooms are connected each other through alternative circulations without considering the corridor, thus breaking its linearity.
The living rooms, all interconnected and next to the access, are organized facing the street, while the bedrooms are located around the courtyards.
The children’s bedroom becomes a large room placed in the center of the house, the transition area between the public and private parts thanks to the shelf that makes them independent.
Neutral materials and finishes combine with punctual touches of color leaving the prominence to the original elements of the house, such as pavements, radiators and plaster mouldings.
The different pieces of furniture, belonging to previous homes and family heirlooms, find their place completing the intervention and showcasing their value.
The first visit we made to the house had a strong impact on us; a dense vegetation was visible from the street making the inside quite promising. Once in the plot, three pavillions, discovered one after the other, formed the house and were built at different time following the family growth.
Since the very beginning, it seemed to us that there was a strong connection between the client, whom we met a little before, and the house they had just acquired. Therefore, our proposal fundamentally aimed to reinforce this bound and protect the special character that, in our opinion, they shared.
The result is an heterogeneous intervention, with various actions focused in different areas, sometimes incorporated during the construction works, participating in some way in the continuous evolution of the house from its first built pavillion.
The core of the house is located in the central pavillion, with access to the front garden and backyard. Surrounding it, there are two smaller pavillions dedicated to the music studio and office room, which are work spaces for both parents.
The bedrooms, located on the top floor of different pavillions, are communicated through a bridge providing fun to the routes through the house; similarly, a hidden staircase connects the children bedroom directly to the music room found two floors below them.
The exterior spaces covered with pieces of clay end up tying the house to the ground in the most conceptual sense.
It is, thus, a very lively house both inside and outside its pavillions; a house that is intensely familiar in its central core and, at the same time, enormously social; a house where it is possible to find someone as well as to isolate oneself in any of its different corners.
The work arises due to the necessary renovation of an 80s apartment for the exclusive use of two elderly people, who were surprised by his son, almost as a gift, with the full renovation of the place in order to adapt it to their current needs.
Located on the eighth floor of a tower in the Madrid neighbourhood of Moratalaz, the apartment has two full fronts open to the city.
With the premise of facilitating the use of the dwelling in every project decision, a central nucleus was proposed organizing the circulations around it while giving access to the different rooms. These circulation spaces around it are illuminated through different mechanisms creating a close relationship with the exterior.
The master bedroom is located next to the living room and visually connected with it while both the guest bedroom and the one for the person in charge of the house works maintain a certain independence and privacy with respect to the former spaces.
It is, therefore, an intended simple, bright and open to the city proposal with the aim of improving the living conditions of this elderly married couple who are expected to spend much of their daily life at home.
The transformation of a conventional loft into a suitable space for life, work and the daily hobbies of a musician and filmmaker underlies this proposal. The acoustic insulation necessary for the space gives this area a quiet and introverted character that dominates the proposal.
The access level, more open and flexible, is organized around certain elements such as the kitchen, toilet, staircase and a large storage area, all located on the perimeter. A solid soundproof door gives access to the bedroom floor above that shares space with the piano, with views over the city.
Large wooden panels cover the floor and partially the walls. The staircase that ascends to the bedroom is carpeted, acting as an acoustic conditioner.
Both materials, commonly used in the boxes of musical instruments, help to generate the intimate work space that was pursued.
On a parcel located in the dense city center of Abanilla, a small village in the province of Murcia, we were asked to design a “weekend house”. The house consists of three separate but related homes.
The main house, for the parents, is located on the first floor. It is conceived as more of a village home, with direct access from the courtyard through a staircase that leads directly to the street. The property includes several common areas that serve as the meeting points for family life.
Above, the other two apartments, overlapped in section, enjoy views to the street and the courtyard. They will be occupied by the children when they are older so they can enjoy their independence without losing connection to the family house.
The broken stone geometry and building envelope are intended to reflect the parent’s job, stonemason and enthusiastic in their work, with the strength that the material and represent the proposed rig.
The project is for a dwelling located on a small parcel, resulting from the division of a larger plot into eight equal parts. It is located in a unique Madrid neighborhood where one finds relatively large, recently built homes mixed casually with small humble structures that have been inhabited for decades.
The elongated proportions of the parcel require the house to be laid out along the longer sides producing two outdoor spaces at the entry and at the back. The ground floor is directly connected with these outdoor spaces and serves as a base for the compact volumes of the bedroom floor above.
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The transparency of the ground floor makes these volumes above appear to be floating on it.
The Project consists of a single family house located on a modest parcel with a strong slope and exceptional views of the mountains of the Sierra on the outskirts of Madrid. The house evolves from the slope of the terrain and sets itself on the lot to provide garden terraces between the built volume and the perimeter of the site.
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By way of an exterior stair with a gentle pitch, the grounds are connected to a large rooftop terrace. This space endows the house with magnificent views as well as providing a complementary exterior space for the interior rooms, allowing one to move freely from interior to exterior whether in the kitchen, the living room, enjoying the sun, etc..
As a result, there is a natural continuity between domestic activity and the site itself, emphasizing the understanding of the house as a true extension of the parcel, in its spaces and uses.
The built volume increases gradually from the first encounter. The height at the access street is a single level, rising to two levels at the upper edge, due to the presence of the studio above the main bedroom. In this way, the house is integrated naturally with the strongly sloping terrain, while producing an entry at a more intimate scale. It also creates a rich ambiguity of perception from different points of view.
The finish building materials, white stucco walls and a black slate tile roof, are those traditionally used in the Sierra around Madrid. The slate is used in slabs as a curtain wall construction both on the roofs as well as on the walls visibly exposed to the exterior, as if it were a protective shell. The private interior patios are clad in the white stucco.
To maximize the physical and visual connections between interior and exterior spaces, the house is conceived with a number of entrances and exits, creating a permeability which makes the most of the site.
This commission consists is for a housing project for two brothers and their families. The location of the construction takes advantage of a steeply sloped terrain in a predominantly horizontal landscape.
The different slopes permit each of the two houses to have distinctly dimensioned and orientated spaces for similar uses avoiding interference between them despite the desired proximity. The intention to share certain spaces and willingness to separate others became the leitmotif of the project.
The initial premises of the commission were very suggestive. We were to design a generous home with exhibition space for artwork and antiques set on a gentle slope descending a small stretch of arid landscape typical of Muzarra.
The mild climate meant the opportunity to conceive a system of indoor / outdoor spaces, covered by homothetic domes of different sizes. These platforms and structures organize the program while they adapt to the slope from one end to the other of the plot.
The house is situated on a quiet plot within the orderly urban development of Santo Domingo in Madrid where a compact existing housing occupying the center of the plot was the starting point, and that for economy is decided to use the existing basement which was decisive for the location of the new house.
The new proposal, more extended than the compact original dwelling, clearly organizes the parcek into two areas: the first and most representative, geared towards access, and the second, more private and fragmented volumetry, endowed with activities such as swimming pool, tennis games, trampoline, outdoor dining, garden, etc.. We could talk about two sides of the same house
We wanted to retain the idea of the irish cottage seeking to relate the proposal with the country of origin of our clients. In these constructions, these stepped roof offer shelter and become the protagonists of the architecture. The arrangement of the openings in the volume under the roof masks the two floors above ground, as if it were a single floor, seeking a reduction of scale in the perception of the home.
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The entire program of the house, except the master bedroom and garage, are situated on the ground floor, directly related with the parcel. The master bedroom occupies the first floor completely under cover, sheltering in every way the rest of the home.
We hope that over time that the copper roof with its variety of reds, further strengthens the affective bond with the cottages above.
