A PATIO FOR A JUPITER

Fernando Alda

A PATIO FOR A JUPITER. TYPOLOGICAL REHABILITATION.

• Architects

After months of searching, we found this small town-house, almost a ruin, completely propped up, with its façade deformed between two buildings twice as tall. A kind of survivor, he has somehow managed to persist through the city renovation on the 60s hidden on Martínez Montañés Street, which is less than 4m wide.

photo_credit Fernando Alda — Fernando Alda

Recognized by Francisco Collantes in his “Arquitectura Civil Sevillana”, and especially by José Ramón Sierra within his collection of buildings that constitute the supporting fabric of what we call the Sevillian house, we find a very modified home, amalgamated from the perversions of the different inhabitants who have been enjoying the house; including the latter who, occupying only part of the first bays on the ground floor, used the rest of the house as a source of extraction and sale of valuable elements, such as the patio tiles or the covering of the main staircase, which was totally destroyed .

Our approach is that of the typological rehabilitation of the house, returning the hallway-patio-staircase-gallery structure that we recognize as constitutive of the house in Seville, and modifying the position of the second patio to, without altering the first two bays, organize the house between more private and secluded spaces on the left and openings, light and available space on the right. Thus, we managed to transfer the rhythm of shadows from the street through the two patios, one covered and interior and the other open and in contact with the changing weather. In this way we combine the open phenomenological experience with the structure and typological movements of the Sevillian home.

With a careful recovery of the original materials, the system of unbaked clay brick walls becomes evident, and is proposed to coexist with more contemporary materials such as steel and concrete, which are not hidden. The homely warmth is given by the wood, which comes down the stairs to welcome you, and takes the center of the stage on the upper floors.

The entire intervention is completed with a careful selection of vegetable species, from the tree in the exterior patio to the interior plant curtain or the palm trees on the ground floor, of the same species that appears in one of the very few photographs of the original state of the home.