The house is located between party walls. Therefore, it opens generously on its front facades, closing on the sides where neighbouring buildings are contiguous. It develops in three floors. The ground floor is located at a height of 1’50m to allow a semi-basement and make possible the natural lighting in its rooms.
On the facade plane, a slight setback is made that marks both the pedestrian access and the road access. This gesture is materialised with a solid iroko wood gate, which allows to intuit the adjoining space but at the same time serves to filter the views from the outside. Once the threshold is crossed, an external staircase leads to a previous hall covered by a porch.
The access is set back to allow a gradual transition from the outside to the inside. The entrance is conceived as a private space and therefore transparent, with the exception of the access door made of iroko wood. From the entrance space you can see the back patio with the pool, understood as a natural extension of the house.
The ground floor is structured by a longitudinal axis of circulation, where the hall and the distributor are located, which gives access to all the rooms and houses the staircase that allows vertical circulation. The axis orders the space in two differentiated bands (main and service spaces). It is a fluid and common space that runs longitudinally throughout the house, merging with the common spaces, guaranteeing the cohesion of the piece. The lightweight staircase reinforces the longitudinal axis that runs through the plant and allows a band-by-band view of the plot.
The main spaces on the ground floor are structured around three patios, thus ensuring that all rooms face the outside and have both cross ventilation and double natural lighting.
This scheme allows the spaces of relationship to be fluid and structured around a central patio, where the uses of the living room and dining room enjoy great spatial continuity and walks.
This strategy allows a complete reading of the ground floor from any point of the plot, due to the visual relationship established by the three patios. This allows the rooms to be read continuously and understood as a single open space but without losing the functional independence of the spaces with this action.
The ground floor opens generously to the patios that are understood as an extension of the house. The limits are dematerialised with glass sliders that allow direct communication with the outside. Thanks to this permeability, the exterior space penetrates in the rooms.
The central patio becomes the natural air conditioner of the house, visually increasing its size and generating transparency between the different uses.
The first floor is also articulated around a distributor that gives access to all the rooms. The master bedroom and the library-study open to the south, have a longitudinal terrace that offers views of the mountain chain. While the kids’ bedrooms and the guest bedroom overlook the backyard but do not create an unpleasant view over the main garden and pool. The central patio also has a terrace that allows to hang the laundry.
The semi-basement floor has parking space for four cars and a disk to facilitate the manoeuvre, along with the warehouse / cellar. The living room with the kitchen forms a unique space but they are separated by a sheet of glass to avoid smells and smoke, the room is naturally illuminated thanks to the sliding window located on the facade.
