How narrow can a space become without losing its habitability? What are the minimum dimensions that a dwelling must have to ensure the comfort of its inhabitants and the correct performance of their daily activities?
In a tour of different houses located throughout Spain, we set out to understand their organization and distribution by discovering, in their interior spaces, various design strategies that aim to conceive the maximum use of space.
It is apparently no mere coincidence that the narrowest house in Europe is located in the city of Valencia, with a width of 107 cm. Looking at those elongated plots that make up the urban fabric of some of the cities of Spain, these houses with few meters of facade can be presented as case studies, which using various materials, equipment and construction techniques, give rise to uses and functions that are adapted to the needs of its inhabitants defining, sometimes, the style of a particular era or historical moment.
Below, we present a series of 8 houses on Spanish soil to analyze through their floor plan layouts.
Oché House / EovaStudio
- Location: La Línea de la Concepción, Spain
- Project Year: 2022
The plot where the dwelling is developed has a narrow and elongated morphology, almost at the limit of the conditions necessary for habitability, with barely 3.5 meters wide and 15 meters long. In contrast, the south orientation of the plot and the magnificent views towards the Rock of Gibraltar made it possible to provide suitable conditions of natural light, ventilation, and attractive visuals for a dwelling with a low budget and difficult execution conditions.
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Casa sa Cova / Missio 21 arquitectes
- Location: Portocolom, Spain
- Project Year: 2022
The urban grid consists of orthogonal streets with elongated plots. In this area, the buildings located on the first line of the coast also have a space adjacent to the main building for the storage of boats and fishing equipment. [...] The plot is located in the Sant Jaume square and is characterized by a front facade of only 2.85 m widening later to 3.20m. The total length of the plot is 18.00m.
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Renovation of a House in La Garriga / MIRAG Arquitectura i Gestió
- Location: La Garriga, Spain
- Project Year: 2022
The two-story house is located in the town of La Garriga, near Barcelona, and it was built in 1884. The House occupies a narrow plot of 5x30 meters next to the old town [...] Inner divisions were removed to expand the interior spaces of the house, gain bigger rooms, and bring more light to the core of the house. The new distribution is organized around the central staircase, which opens at some points to create a visual relationship between the different spaces and provide them with more light.
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Convent House / Pineda Monedero
- Ubicación: Sabadell, España
- Año: 2022
Convent House is the extension of a 1900 house between party walls in Sabadell, Barcelona. The existing building was a two-storey house with an overbuilt courtyard. The intervention preserves the street façade and the Catalan vault on the ground floor. The rest is emptied with the aim of growing in height and reducing the building’s footprint by freeing up as much space as possible in the courtyard.
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Casa Roc / NeuronaLab
- Location: Spain
- Project Year: 2022
This building between party walls has been functionally and climatically adapted to meet the needs of the family life of its new owners, respecting the environment and promoting the neighborhood relationship in the old town of the municipality. It is a pass-through house with a very differentiated double façade.
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1721 House / HARQUITECTES
- Location: Granollers, Spain
- Project Year: 2021
The plot, occupied by a house on the ground floor at the time the project started, goes across two streets in an East-West direction, the West façade faces a main street in the town and is therefore the natural area of access, leaving the east side as a road access that could take advantage of an old construction as a parking lot. The application of urban planning regulations allows a volume between party walls (4.80 m.) aligned with the street. Ground floor plus three upper floors (14.60m high) and 14m deep from the street façade. Despite having a magnificent patio inside the block, one of the neighbouring buildings facing the south reaches the regulatory height and covers practically the entire length of the patio blocking sunlight for much of the day. The reduced height of the existing construction compared to the neighbouring South and its non-conforming volume were the main reasons why it was decided not to take advantage of it.
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ShowPass Refurbishment / Energiehaus Arquitectos
- Location: Barcelona, Spain
- Project Year: 2021
ShowPass is an EnerPhit demonstrative retrofit of a building from the beginning of the 20th century, located in the urban heart of the city of Barcelona. The energy solutions are on display to expose them to housing developers and construction professionals through open days. ShowPass proposes energy efficiency actions with a broader focus so as to demonstrate and disseminate the viability of EnerPHit energy retrofit in the Mediterranean as a reference standard.
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House & Studio in Sant Feliu de Llobregat / andrea + joan arquitectes
- Location: Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Spain
- Project Year: 2021
Transformation of an old house into a studio-house, which combines the domestic and the productive reality in a set of vertically connected spaces. The house is part of the historic center of Sant Feliu de Llobregat which is composed of narrow and deep plots, occupied by single-family homes between party walls whose protected facades build the characteristic image of the area.
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Editor's Note: The texts were sent by the authors of the mentioned projects.
