PIN8 House

PIN8 House | Girona, Spain | 2022
[PMMT Arquitectura]

Located in Baix Empordà, the PIN8 HOUSE design is based on the urban and heritage requirements of the town where it belongs. Its design combines the characteristics of the environment and the needs of its inhabitants, which are manifested in the materials, construction system, flexibility of use, distribution, and integration between the exterior and interior spaces.

This standalone house, with a rectangular floor plan and two floors, seeks maximum permeability through large openings, double-height spaces, and landscaped patios. These openings, which are on the ground floor, are directly connected to the garden, while the double-height spaces provide views of the sky and of the exterior from different perspectives and heights.

Also, the three patios on the first floor meet the façade regulations and provide natural lighting and vegetation to the built volume.

The combination of these three strategies -openings, double-heights, and patios- is not only expressed in connections to the outside from all the rooms of the house but also in the good bioclimatic behavior of the construction. Thermal comfort is guaranteed with well-oriented openings that maximize solar incidence in winter and cross ventilation due to the chimney effect, avoiding thermal stratification of the air in summer.

The main uses of the house happen on the ground floor, leaving the upper floor for the occupation of a guest room with a bathroom, and for the landscaped patios and mezzanines that open to the double-height rooms. The location and arrangement of the stairs and mezzanines that connect both floors allow the house to be expanded in the future, providing functional flexibility in case the family grows.

The main rooms such as the bedrooms, studio, laundry room, bathrooms, kitchen, dining room, and living room are located on the ground floor, the main space the one that combines the uses of the living room, dining room, and kitchen in a double-height space, completely open to the garden and one of the upper patios. On this floor, the connection with the garden is direct through large sliding windows that free the corners of the rooms when they are open, which are protected from solar radiation by mobile wooden panels located on the outside of the enclosure.

The permeability of the ground floor and the opaquer envelope on the upper floor are achieved with a perimeter structure made up of metal pillars on which a CLT cross-laminated wood structure rests. The structure, which is seen from the inside of the house, evokes the image of a large, inverted boat or the ribcage of the whale from the Pinocchio story, which gives the name to this house. The wooden structure, along with other construction elements and furniture in the house come from local manufacturers and workshops, being able to call the PIN8 HOUSE a pre-industrialized and 0Km construction. Text description by the architects.