A house can be the “theater of dreams”, but it can also be a laboratory for architectural purposes. Thus, a project like this approached this domestic challenge not only as a field open to study and experimentation – the place to test new ideas and forms that can be expanded to other places - but also as a space in which to experiment with new formats and construction techniques: the house not only as an aesthetic expression of a way of life, but as a laboratory for constructive and technological innovation.
This small experiment aimed to transform a conventional flat into an open and flexible space for a couple. It consisted in converting a corseted system of walls and rooms through a long and narrow corridor into a wide and open place to be-eat-sleep-read-paint, whose only door will be the entrance.
The house, about 90 constructed m2, consisted of 9 doors, which gives an idea of its poor flexibility. What we conceived here was an open and flexible relationship of the spaces capable of converting the house into a unique space. The main day-zone was linked to the outside to take advantage of the most important views of the town; the night zone was reserved for a more intimate space, related to the services of the house and a small interior patio.
Materiality was also a key factor in the project. We projected a continuous relationship between the floor and the ceiling that run through the entire house without interruptions. The lower plane was projected in light-weighted concrete, and the upper plane with a corrugated sheet that contained the lighting. In this way, the wooden furniture acts as partitions, intentionally not reaching up to the ceiling to strengthen this idea of continuity in space. In addition, this furnishing provides not only separation between the romos but also storage for the house.
If the commission was a success, and our clients could prove it, it is only because this house, with its design and details, allowed us to expand the mental borders of them, favoring architecture at all times. By claiming small experiments like this, we not only want to leave behind the excesses and opulence of a moment that was never our own, but to prevail a new discourse that puts its inhabitants at the center of the architect’s concerns and that broadens our architectural horizons understanding that a house can even have only one door.
