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Architects: Atelier Cais
- Year: 2021
Text description provided by the architects. In the place there was a housing building from the beginning of the 20th century, with a strong cultural identity and which, through visits to the place, we understand as part of the collective memory of the residents of Rua Arriaga. The developer expected the construction of his family home and the project should include three bedrooms, a living room with access to the outside, a garden with a water tank and a garage area for three cars, one of which collection.
The premise of rehabilitating the existing was a common starting point and the challenge was to expand the pre-existence and its articulation with a new spatial and experiential program, in a collaborative exercise. The existing interior elements were in a state of ruin and the spatial organization did not correspond to the way of living, so it was decided to maintain the front facade and the two sides, with total alteration of the interiors and redesign of the back facade, which we found to be a rude blind wall. By designing the space for the garage on the ground floor, the mediation of the house with the public space was resolved.
On floor one, the large social space of the house was organized: a kitchen facing East and a large living room facing West and communicating with the garden. In the center, a volume of water and cabinets is assumed to be functional. Due to the balance of the ratio of levels between patios, it was not possible to establish the garden at the level of the living room, so an intermediate garden level was proposed between the ground floor and one. A light metal staircase is intended to be almost omitted. A small tree and a water tank characterize the outdoor seating. The second floor has the parents' bedroom facing the street and two single bedrooms facing the garden.
A void lit by a skylight guarantees communication between the living room and the bedroom hall. The circulation staircase between floors is located in the same location as the existing one, respecting the volumetric direction of the protruding body of the facade and the visual axis established there. On the social floor, the space resulting from this balance generates a niche where a table is designed with a strong relationship with the window. The floor of the rooms corresponds to an expansion of the pre-existing one, with the new section of the eastern facade retreating from the plane of the existing facade, generating a covered exterior balcony in this interval.
Referring to the internal programmatic layout, the ground floors are intended for the house's social program, with social spaces sequential to the entrances and kitchens at the bottom of the plan, to the West. In the continuity of the implementation of the stairs, a functional linear nucleus is defined in which there are social sanitary facilities and support storage spaces. This experiential void of articulation guarantees the reading of the original pre-existence volume and the canopy that covers the balcony seeks to establish a sense of unity to the whole.
The stone foundation of the front facade is part of the recovery of the existing stonework, in a careful process of disassembly and assembly, and allows access for people, cars and meters. The existing facades were reinforced through reinforced plaster projection and the new structure is made of reinforced concrete. Three interior covering materials resolve the expression of the house: riga wood, trigaches marble stone and white tile, the last two also appear in the garden, pavement and water tank.
