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Architects: TALLER PONTI
- Area: 203 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:José Hevia
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Lead Architect: Jaume Coscollar
Text description provided by the architects. It is a row house built in the early 90s. It is located in Sant Pere de Ribes, a village 50 kilometers south of Barcelona. It was large but dense, as it corresponds to the type of middle-class housing of the time. It was not a dark house, but it was semi-darkness. To optimize the number of floors, the slabs leave a very tight clear height of just 255cm. There are four floors: one with a parking area (at street level), a ground floor (at the level of a rear public garden), a first floor, and an attic. The house is well located, in the upper part of the village.
Instead of entering the house from the street level, opening a gate, climbing the flight of exterior stairs leading to the terrace, and then crossing an opaque door, the new proposal is to enter the house at ground level, from the rear public garden, and through the former backyard, without the need to overcome unevenness, and through a large glass door. What used to be the first floor now becomes a ground floor, all of it on the same level: with a courtyard at the west end and a large terrace at the east end. The pavement links the courtyard and terrace, through the interior space. Both the interior and the exterior are domestic spaces. From the new access, through the courtyard and the interior rooms, one can see the terrace in the background and, further away, the sea line. A set of sliding doors closes off each of the rooms, arranged successively along the longitudinal axis. When the doors are opened, their leaves are hidden inside double partitions.
On the former second floor, converted into the first floor by the change of access, private life takes place. It functions, all of it, as a large suite. In the center of the floor, a five-meter-high hole has been opened, allowing the sky to be seen and the sun to enter. The storage spaces are always attached to the party walls. Given the large number of cabinets required, they are conceived as an architectural element. The idea is to turn the typology upside down and find luxury in the austerity of everyday gestures.
