Active Spaces

An urban dwelling with an extensive family program such as this requires a substantial number of technical and secondary spaces that are as crucial to domestic life as the so-called main ones. Bathrooms, toilets, kitchens, pantries, laundry rooms, drying areas, utility rooms, storage spaces, wardrobes, planters, staircases, bicycle storage, and terraces make up a repertoire of active spaces that are as decisive in the design as those devoted to more leisurely forms of living.

The Central Floor

The geometry of the plot on which the house stands—a ten-meter square with three party walls and a south-facing facade—combined with its location on the edge of a low-density neighborhood, facing the rear of a busy avenue, suggests moving this collection of small spaces to the perimeter of the plot. This arrangement frees the center of the square for the main living spaces, protected by a double belt of storage, enclosures, and services.

The Thick Boundary

A double brick wall, one external and the other internal, thickens the boundaries of the plot and accommodates the four concrete columns, set back from the party walls, that support the slabs on each floor. The first-floor slab is lightened in the manner of a Serlian ceiling, while the second-floor slab is set at two different levels to negotiate the difference in height between the terrace and the interior. The rooms containing wet services are arranged within the outer ring, allowing for natural ventilation and grouping the downpipes and service shafts around the four concrete supports.

Intermediate Spaces

A quarter of the inner square is reserved for a courtyard onto which the living room-kitchen and the main bedroom open, while the other three bedrooms are protected from the southern sun and the immediacy of the street by the loggia formed within the thick skin. At the entrance to the house, the doubling of the facade creates a vestibule where bicycles can be left, mediating the transition between public and private space. This double facade gives the openings towards the domestic interior and the urban exterior an appropriate scale, with each face responding to the desired functional and figurative requirements.

Lastly, the roof terrace is conceived as a place for celebration and gathering, and is therefore reached with a certain degree of independence from the rest of the house. A single-flight staircase is inserted between the two brick boxes, which act as parapets, creating a tangential, outdoor route that skirts the living spaces and allows almost independent access to the different floors.

Construction as Language

The intention of incorporating the courtyard into the living room suggests using the same material for the walls of both spaces, blurring the boundaries between interior and intermediate space. A grayish brick, alternating English and Castilian bonding patterns, forms the two wall boxes that make up the thick skin of the house. This ceramic materiality, together with the ribbed concrete slabs, gives the space a constructive expression that nuances the abstraction of the plan.

Geometry as Composition

The house adopts the typology of a central plan surrounded by secondary spaces as a consequence of the dimensions of the plot and its boundary conditions. The concentric geometry resulting from this spatial arrangement is relied upon as a means of establishing fluid yet dense relationships between the different spaces of the house: between those we inhabit slowly and those that enable the unfolding of everyday life.