The project merge two apartments by placing the night area upstairs and the living spaces downstairs. The key feature is the staircase, which acts as more than just a transition; it creates a new third space. Through smart design, the result is greater than the sum of its parts: "1 + 1 = 3".
The project is articulated in a flexible way around the living-dining room, which in turn orbits around the staircase. The south-facing front becomes a large space open to the community garden; however, the north facade houses the most protected spaces, the kitchen and the studio. In this way, two transverse axes are built that relate and communicate, respectively, the kitchen with the office and the dining room, and the studio with the living area and the terrace. This relationship is built from mobile elements that form a mutable front that enables different degrees of physical or visual permeability and ensures the privacy or isolation of these rooms at certain moments of the life of the house.
The project contributes to the renovation of the urban fabric to house new ways of living more suitable for users and 21st-century quality standards. Spaces are made flexible to accommodate diverse uses, attending to current and also future needs, which will prolong the useful life of the home. A clear commitment is made to slow life, with a kitchen that is used daily without renouncing its role as an integrated part of the house. The studio, linked to the living room, can be closed at certain times, becoming a private space for remote work and even a full bedroom. For this purpose, two integrated furniture elements are available: a bathroom-closet and a pull-out bed, which is hidden under the stairs.
The strategic use of oak wood with natural oil treatment is extended throughout the house, both in the warm flooring of the upper floor and in the staircase space, where it clearly becomes the protagonist and, descending through it, nuances the baseboard of the lower floor, providing the large room with a friendly scale. From this central point, where a topography carved entirely in wood is drawn, the material colonizes the vertical walls of the rest of the home, inviting its inhabitants to live in a haptic space, protected by the warm carpentry that, in its contact with the floor, acquires texture, as if they were plant elements.
The staircase transcends its own use to become a container furniture unit with a second flight that is much more permeable and lighter, a furniture with joints typical of Japanese carpentry. At its base, we find a tiered seating area that hides the family's games inside, a window-frame for looking, and a small niche in the wall, as if it were a tokonoma. A collection that follows the teachings of the architect Tetsuro Yoshida and that is incorporated into Western culture through Adolf Loos's raumplan: the staircase as the place where things happen in the house.
Team:
Architects: Sagrario Fernández Raga y Carlos Rodríguez Fernández
Construction execution management: Eva Martínez Fernández
Construction company: Reformas Logo Hogar
Woodwork: Ramón Agudo Pérez, TCDM, Guarnizo, Cantabria
Wood treatment: Ana Guardo Llorente, Central de Parquets, Santander
Floor sanding: Francisco Guardo Ibars, Parquets Guardo, Santander
Metalwork: Antonio Fuertes Sáez, Talleres metálicos Fuertes, Santander
Exterior joinery: Ventanas Novoa, Santander
Structural engineering: Gamaliel López
Photographer: Gabriel Gallegos Alonso
Materials Used:
Wood: American oak wood, Marino de la Fuente, Santander
Wood boards: Finsa, Maderas Moratinos, Santander
Wood oil: Oil Plus 2C, Rubio Monocoat
Slatted paneling: Milled panels, Asolo model in oak, Latho.
Windows: CorVision and Cor70, Aluminios Cortizo
Lighting: Green Iluminación & Decó
Stoneware flooring: Porcelanosa Grupo
