INFILL HOUSE Barcelona
We found ourselves with a huge mansion to renovate. This is a dwelling built in the 50s, in very bad shape, placed between medians and stratified into three huge floors that do not connect spatially at any time. For these reasons, the house is dark and the solitary. It is a place where one is not lost but feels lonely.
How is this turned into an habited house? How is it made so that the size will not be a problem but an added value?
The key was in the importance of the dual scale, to understand the house as unique and compact and, in turn, as the sum of many independent and interrelated spaces. A house to live with privacy but also with the presence of others, with an intimate and also collective spatiality.
“Living in a three-story house is like living in a big tree. A tree that has thick branches that hosts independent spaces.”
How is this idea translated architecturally? Our work focused on shelling the central space of the house, the most compact and dark. The types of spaces were defined as open spaces, closed spaces, patios and holes that were placed on a checkerboard marked by the structure. The position of each of these spaces resulted in new relationships: the dual spaces connect and help to give a three dimensionality to the house through the views, the courtyards allow the entrance of light, and the holes in the walls favor idea of shared space, of interior facades, a common living space.
