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Architects: Marta Badiola + Jorge Pizarro
- Area: 225 m²
- Year: 2015
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Photographs:Marta Badiola + Jorge Pizarro
Text description provided by the architects. The project is a full refurbishment of a duplex in Madrid’s city center that will host a family expecting its third child and whose needs will change drastically along the next years. For that reason, the house is designed as an unfinished space, which will be modified and adapted to respond to the life changes of its inhabitants.
In the first state proposed,the house has large and fluid spaces, where the absence of physical barriers (open spaces, doors disappearing into walls, very few partitions, continuous pavements...) allows permanent visual contact for a family with small children, understanding their spatial needs as an extensible playground. On the lower floor the house is built around three volumes, which coincide with the most intimate and private spaces (two bathrooms and a dressing room) and around a single volume upstairs (the third bathroom). The remaining program is configured as a series of interstitial spaces without clear boundaries and dissolving the traditional structure of the distributor hall.
As residents grow up, and needs for large spaces to play in are reduced, the house will be fragmented to respond to these new situations and requirements of independence in a very simple, fast and economic way. In this second phase, the project proposes an adaptability solution through which, with only two plasterboard partitions, the functionality of the house changes, offering more private spaces while maintaining the common family gathering spaces: the kitchen and living room.
The staircase, built in folded sheet lined with bamboo and sustained with tensioned steel wires, plays an important role in this central core of the house, by being a lightweight and light-permeable element acting as a spatial and activities link in the house. It is also an interactive object, which functions as a decorative support that holds the different expressions and family events throughout the year (birthdays, Christmas, Halloween...) giving the house a unique and customizable character.
The whole house has been adapted to improve climatic conditions with better insulation and smooth cross ventilation due to the fact that all doors and windows are sliding.
The project aims to achieve a dwelling whose life proceeds in parallel and harmony with the people who live in it, adjusting to their needs in time and understanding the necessity of adaptability and customization in our contemporary lifestyles.
