Creating sculptural architecture that includes the warmth of a home is a challenge. And this project, with its large dimensions, its ambition and its location dominating all of Barcelona, ran the risk of becoming a showhome worthy of a photo shoot, but not to live in. To give it visual rhythm, everything superfluous was eliminated and the house was divided into three volumes. And to provide the necessary balance, all the unique elements, including the staircase, were accumulated in a central module, wrapped in copper. In this way, more subtlety is achieved in the rest of the building, using austere masonry walls on the outside and warm materials on the inside.
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Three vibrant and harmonious volumes that flow into each other; a game of composition generates different perspectives in the garden; materials that set the colour palette of stone and white; and a layout staggered over different levels to fluently and efficiently communicate the diverse uses. That is how we created this project for a musician who wanted an inspiring home complete with recording studio. Pure rhythm.
The recording studio is situated in one of the blocks, an impressive six-metre high cube that only opens onto the garden. On the opposite side is the more intimate area, and, connecting the two, we have the central block which comprises the thoroughfare and common area.
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The stone walls guide the path of light and gaze in this house. Their presence speaks volumes and gives the project a sense of organisation. And, despite their solidity, as they are located on a transversal axis, these walls give up all the prominence to the intangible: they allow the sun to enter the interior from the south and draw in your towards the north, which offers some fabulous views over the Collserola valley. Sun, pines and oaks. The Mediterranean environment becomes part of the house.
The relationship between the house and its surroundings is underlined by the materials and colours used. The stone, the earthy tones and the off-white make the construction blend in with the surroundings and take root with the mountain that houses it.
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Close the house to the outside and create within it its own nature. Such was the challenge of this project, that translates this intention by contrasting sensations in an extreme way. From the outside, the architecture offers a compact appearance, almost monolithic in its volumetry; the interior, on the other hand, is developed with a clear fragmentary character, since the project is concatenating volumes that are sometimes full, sometimes empty. The latter – again the contrast – use wood to maintain the illusion of forcefulness and continuity, but offer a dematerialized reality with which successive landscapes are generated: patios, gardens, terraces. The result is a delicious permeable interior island composed of pieces that successively open to apparently empty spaces but occupied by careful atmospheres of light and shadow, sounds and aromas.