897 SIC

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.

The horizon is everything in this plot. It is a place dominated by horizontal lines with an extraordinary view over the Mediterranean. Therefore, the project developed for this location seeks the magic of weightlessness. To achieve this, the design contemplates two volumes superimposed and displaced from each other that leave the ground floor open and turn the upper area into a floating construction that looks into infinity and closes on the north facade. The use of glass, cantilevers and colors complete this poetic play of light and shadow, closed and open, matter and emptiness.

A gentle ramp descends from street level to lead to a welcome square where the access to the house is located. In this way, the great unevenness of this plot is saved and the character of the large and welcoming family that owns it is taken care of. Then behind the white volume that is the house, closed to the street, an open garden with panoramic views over the Vallès Occidental welcomes its guests.