| The conditions of the plot, in-between existing houses, and with a front of less than 5 meters and a depth of 18 meters, determine the spatial characteristics of the proposal, trying to make the most out of this situation. We think that it is possible to obtain an optimal spatial quality for the house if we avoid the conventional typology of housing, that with many partition walls and with a clear differentiation between spaces. Therefore we avoid that typology, and we go for the maximum transparency between the rooms from the facade to the rear dividing wall, making the building almost as a single contiguous space. For this reason, the house is designed with successive adjoining romos, avoiding as far as possible, the appearance of either distribution corridors or solid separations, overlapping one room with the next one through maximum transparency. As part of this strategy there are two courtyards, one central and one backyard that maximize the illumination of the whole space making possible the optimal habitability within such a narrow and long plot.
This continuous development goes up to the upper floors through a staircase attached to the common wall to the neighbour. We adopt a materiality for the staircase that also enhances visibility and transparency. The house is arranged on two floors that organize the different uses in more public areas or more private ones, depending on the needs of the owner, and not so much in a physical separation between them. Following the parameters allowed by the urban regulatios of Santiponce, in addition to the two floors, the space underneath the pitched roof of the building is also used as living space, creating the only rooms that are not transparent, and therefore more private. Like little hanging houses (which in fact are the bedrooms), their individual picthed roof volumetry end up characterizing the exposed part of the building by its polygonal geometry, which also works as a second facade to the common wall. This second façade is built out of a kind of brick whose proportions could well recall the roman constructions that we can find a few meters from the house in the ancient city of Italica. |
