[Valentí Albareda]
This dwelling/business place at Sant Antoni was a precranial and healthiness home. At the same time, its underground floor was used to store bananas brought from Canaries to be sold in the neighborhood’s market. Moreover, this building was bombarded during the Spanish Civil War.
These facts, associated with the specific architectural elements typical of 1900’s building, have represented the basis to create a new dwelling project, with new necessities but showing the ancient scares.
The project starts knocking down one of the existing vaults to lower the rear facade till the underground creating a new courtyard. Adding two facade doors, the lower floor now is bathed in light besides provided with a crossed ventilation.
The overlapped skins are eliminated leaving the original paraments bare and the manual ceramic brick boards (“rasilla”) that it is used as a basic material all over the structures is taken to be the new coating. This provides a careful and respectful action with the original nobility of this material used now as the new pavement for the bathroom and the new stair.
In the attic floor part of the slab is knocked down to be substituted by a crystal leaf that gives the necessary amplitude for the limited height from the first floor. The maximum obstacles are opened and the beams and vaults are uncovered. The studio zone consists of a continuous table that works as an edge and ends in the bathroom as a support for the wash basin.
The stair to access the attic floor changes the geometry to adjust to the courtesy bathroom’s door that is hidden in the cabinet under the doorsteps. The stair rail, supported in four welding points, forms a triangle that does its function on the stairway and in the attic floor.
The old attic partitions are also thrown and the new support structure works also as the cabinet’s structure for the rooms and continues with the sliding doors guides. The result is dwelling that fulfills family necessities even though respecting the original space soul.
Source: www.divisare.com
Photography by: Jose Hevia
