The project arises from a commission by a young family who want to refurbish a family home located in the centre of the city of Granollers (Barcelona) with the aim to adapt it to their current needs. The construction is a typical terraced house for the area, characterized by its marked depth and reduced width, which are the conditions that have marked the proposal's development.
The layout of the house is distributed over three floors that clearly separate the different areas of the home: the ground floor is the garage, which connects directly to the back patio; the first floor is the dining room, kitchen, living room, study and a terrace; and the second floor is the bedrooms and bathrooms.
The first floor was initially characterized by the presence of various partitions and walls that generated dark and reduced interior spaces. The proposal involves the creation of a more open-plan space by joining the dining room-kitchen and living room areas, reinforcing the visual connection with the interior courtyard, the staircase and the study located on the other side of the facade.
One of the starting points for the project was to revalorise the staircase and interior patio as key elements in generating a new spatial continuity between the storeys and also improving the quality of the light in the home. For this reason, a set of translucent printed glass enclosures was chosen to filter the light without renouncing to a certain degree of privacy. At the same time, a set of sliding doors allows the spaces to be joined or separated according to the specific needs of the moment.
The layout of the rooms on the first floor creates open and luminous spaces in spite of the limited facade width. The strategic alignment of doors, windows and mirrored walls creates continuous visual axes that expand the spatial boundaries of the house and canalize the light coming in from the facades and patio areas towards the interior spaces.
The project reinforces the connection between the house and the rear area facing the pool and garden by creating a series of ‘intermediate’ spaces with different characteristics. On the ground floor, a new multipurpose room has been created in direct contact with the courtyard, which, thanks to the sliding doors, can easily be transformed into an outdoor porch for most of the year. Likewise, on the second floor, a gallery has been created on the facade with large windows that can be opened to the outside, with rolling shutters to protect from direct sunlight in the afternoon. This gallery is designed as a multipurpose space thanks to the installation of a sliding partition that, when closed, creates two rooms that serve as extensions for each of the individual bedrooms, while when open, it creates a shared games room for both rooms.
In terms of energy efficiency, the original building offers a favorable starting point as it has few losses due to the reduced amount of exterior facade. The renovation focuses on efficient passive solutions that allow thermal demand to be adjusted, minimizing the energy loss associated with it. On the one hand, the new layout significantly improves lighting and cross ventilation by incorporating the interior courtyard to a greater extent in order to take advantage of the ‘chimney’ effect for natural cooling. On the other hand, the layout of the intermediate spaces on the facade, together with the use of roll-up sun protection systems, allows heat to be effectively dissipated during the hottest months and solar gains to be maximized during the winter.
