El PIRULero

Flavio Dorta

• Architects

For the extension of this small rural dwelling in the north of the island of Tenerife, we were working with a tight budget and a limited plot, the result of a short buildable margin. Attached on the south side to a party wall and opening its main façade to the north, the new addition also had to fit between the original house—a modest construction from the last century—and a small ravine at the back that separated it from the neighbouring fields.

photo_credit Flavio Dorta — Flavio Dorta

We therefore established a small connecting space between the two structures, resolving both the linkage between the parts of the house and the anchoring of the new volume. Thus, a narrow, lowheight corridor—top-lit by a strip of polycarbonate—acts as an entrance hall, a circulation area, and a threshold space that simultaneously links and separates the two sides of the resulting dwelling.

The new volume responds to its time through a series of simple strategies and yet does not renounce the use of materials rooted in local tradition. We applied a thermal insulation layer in two different textures, combining it on the enclosing wall with the popular volcanic-aggregate mortar render; we carved a large horizontal opening into the volume (which folds at the edge, widening the view cleanly towards the ravine); and we inserted a solitary, faceted window that defines the compact north façade. From above, the integration becomes evident in the reading of the roofscape: the roof is formed by a fold of two planes—one warped and finished with clay tiles, the other extending the façade insulation beneath the photovoltaic panels.