Hasta La Ideas

Spanish firm YLAB Arquitectos has completed a faceted house on the outskirts of Barcelona that appears to have been stretched down a hill.

Located beside the Collserola Natural Park, the three-storey family home is constructed on a small plot, so YLAB Arquitectos designed the building as a simple cube then distorted it to make better use of space and viewpoints.

“The objectives of the project were to get the maximum possible building area within a tight budget and an optimised orientation of all openings while protecting the privacy of the owners,” said the architects.

“The upper faces are extruded upwards to form the roof,” they continued. “The side faces rotate to frame significant scenic moments, mindful of the neighbours’ privacy.”

The house is constructed from concrete and features a white-rendered exterior with seamless edges.

Windows and doors can be concealed behind perforated aluminium shutters that sit flush with the walls.

A double-height kitchen and dining room is positioned on the upper-ground floor and includes drawers, cupboards and counters built from dark-tinted elm, while the lower-ground floor contains a living room and studio with access to the garden.

Stone provides flooring throughout the the house and lines the walls of a top-floor bathroom. The main bedroom is also on this floor.

A Corten steel fence encloses the site and features vertical slits that offer glimpsed views of the house from the street.

Other Spanish houses we’ve featured include a residence comprising a cluster of concrete cubes, a family home in a renovated stable and a house with a glazed living room that thrusts outwards. See more houses in Spain »

Photography is by Marcela Grassi.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Vallvidrera House

The project is situated in the Vallvidrera neighbourhood, a residential area with views overlooking the city of Barcelona, surrounded by the Collserola natural park, in a very sloped and small plot situated between a valley and a pine forest.

The objectives of the project were to get the maximum possible building area within a tight budget and an optimised orientation of all openings while protecting the privacy of the owners. To achieve this, a compact three level volume was created.

The geometry arises directly from the plot given geometry and slope, reinterpreting the aesthetic of the site’s vernacular architecture with its sloped roof, widening on the upper floors to gain some additional area. Formally the volume is a single cube in which every face has been divided into four quadrants. The upper faces are extruded upwards to form the roof. The side faces rotate to frame significant scenic moments, mindful of the neighbours’ privacy.

The façade consists of a continuous skin that provides the same matt white aspect to walls, roofs and openings. The fixed windows are made of glass panes totally flush with the façade, and the operating ones have a white perforated aluminium shutter also installed flush with the skin.

A perforated Corten steel front fence at the low end of the plot gives pedestrian and car access to the property. The exterior spaces are formed by two terraces and the sloped areas have been modelled forming triangulated ramps. Pavements are made in multi-coloured slat, typical of this area, using long narrow tiles for the plane zones, and smaller irregular pieces on sloping ones.

The entrance level is composed by the first dormitory, the bath and the kitchen with a dining room area. The kitchen is in a double height space with two large windows that offer the best views over the valley. In the upper level there is the master bedroom and its bath, both oriented to the pine forest at the back side of the plot.

The semi-buried lower floor is formed by the technical and storage rooms, a living room and a studio both with access to the garden. In the interior of the house the floors and bathroom walls are covered with Capri natural stone and the walls and doors are finished in ivory white colour paint. In the double height area, large built-in dark tinted elm furniture builds the kitchen and dining area wall furniture and the island, ascending to the upper floor to form the master dormitory cupboards. 

Architecture and interior design: YLAB Arquitectos, Barcelona
Authors: Tobias Laarmann and Yolanda Yuste
Project: One family house edification
Client: Private
Area: 286.91 square metres
Location: Vallvidrera, Barcelona

Craftsmen: Coter de Construcciones, Ebanistería Agüera
Structure and walls: prefabricated pieces of celullar concrete by Ytong
Facade outer skin: single layer coating Weber.Pral Terra Cemarksa, white painted
Roof covering: ceramic pieces Colortech, by Tau Cerámica
Outdoor paving: Dark rusty grey slate
Metallic fence: Corten steel sheets cut and folded, designed by YLAB
Interior flooring: polished Capri natural limestone
Walls and ceilings: ivory white matt plastic paint

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YLAB Arquitectos appeared first on Dezeen.

Corten steel columns alternate with floor-to-ceiling glass to bring stripes of light and shadow into this funeral home outside Barcelona by Spanish firm Batlle i Riog Arquitectes (+ slideshow).

Located west of the city in the town of Sant Joan Despí, the stark concrete building nestles against a hillside and was designed by Batlle i Riog Arquitectes with a sloping grass roof that appears as an extension of the landscape.

At the front of the building, this roof pitches back up again to frame a long and narrow facade, where columns are arranged in two rows with a glazed perpendicular entrance in between.

“The steel pillars generate a light gradient, establishing visual filters and protecting the interior from the direct sunlight,” explained the architects.

The interior is divided into two sections that separate ceremonial activities from preparation areas. At the front, a succession of spaces lead guests from a spacious reception area into the main auditorium, then out via a private courtyard.

Each of these spaces features an assortment of raw materials that include stone floors, concrete ceilings and timber wall panels, as well as the vertical Corten elements.

Small plant-filled courtyards also intersperse the interiors and are surrounded by glazing to allow them to function as lightwells.

“The materiality generated by the assortment of exposed structural element textures together with the natural light qualify and determine the atmospheres of each space, accompanying the visitors’ mourning at every turn,” added the architects.

The rear spaces contain preparation areas where coffins can be housed before funerals take place.

Other funeral homes featured on Dezeen include a stone chapel with a sharply pointed gable in Germany and a whitewashed hall with a copper roof in Finland. See more memorial architecture »

Photography is by Jordi Surroca.

Here’s a project description from Batlle i Riog Arquitectes:

New Funeral Home in Sant Joan Despí

The building integration on site parts from the adaptation to the existing topography, with a set of pitched roofs on the terrain. The vegetation treatment of part of these roofs pretends to fade with the adjacent green slopes and improve the vision of the ensemble from the perimeter streets, on a higher level. With this strategy, in addition, the apparent building volume is reduced, lowering the vision of the construction and increasing the green surfaces.

The floor plan of the building, lays out an organisation in two areas clearly differentiated, by a public area composed by set of rooms designed to serve the users of the facility and a private area composed by the needed service rooms for the deceased preparation and the coffins movement between them. A system of patios completes the layout of the floor plan, these patios organise, rank and illuminate the spaces and establish filters between different ambiances.

The structural system is composed of walls and reinforced concrete slabs formed with pinewood boards and Corten steel pillars made of flat bars. All these elements define the building image and character providing simplicity to the materiality of the piece. The materialisation is completed with natural stone pavements and wooden vertical facing producing interior warmth. The steel pillars generate a light gradient, establishing visual filters and protecting the interior from the direct sunlight.

The materiality generated by the assortment of exposed structural element textures together with the natural light qualify and determinate the atmospheres of each space, accompanying the visitor’s mourning at every turn. In this way each space is illuminated by a specific light different from the rest. In essence, light and matter.

Authors: Enric Batlle I Durany, Joan Roig Duran, Albert Gil Margalef, Architects
Collaborators: Miriam Aranda, Architect / Dolors Feu, Agricultural Engineer & Landscape Designer / Diana Calicó, Elisabeth Torregrosa, Technical Architects / Sj12, Albert Colomer, Installation Engineering / Static, Gerardo Rodríguez, Structural Engineering

Builder: Vopi4
Surface: 700 Sqm
Location: Sant Joan Despí, Barcelona
Project & Execution Date: 2009-2011

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by Batlle i Riog Arquitectes appeared first on Dezeen.

Spanish architect Alberto Campo Baeza has extended a house he completed 25 years ago in Madrid by adding a boxy white studio in the garden.

First completed in 1988, Turégano House was designed by Alberto Campo Baeza as the home for graphic designer Roberto Turégano and his partner, actress Alicia Sánchez.

The couple requested the addition of a small garden studio to serve as a workplace for Turégano.

Campo Baeza’s concept for the main house had been to create a simple white cube, so for the extension he decided to create a volume that appears to be an exact quarter of the existing structure.

“Next to the ‘cubic white cabin’ we built a little white box,” he explained.

Glazing is positioned at the two ends of the building, offering residents a view right through, while the two long elevations are left as austere white surfaces.

To strengthen this relationship with the house, the architect installed an identical stone floor inside the studio. “Thus the two pieces are in complete harmony,” he added.

The final addition to the space is a circular skylight, intended as a counterpoint to the strict rectilinear arrangement maintained elsewhere.

Campo Baeza has also recently completed a pair of houses in Spain – a poet’s residence with a secret garden in Zaragoza and a concrete hilltop house in Toledo.

See more architecture by Alberto Campo Baeza »
See more residential architecture in Spain »

Photography is by Miguel De Guzmán.

Here’s a project description from Alberto Campo Baeza:

Little White Box

Next to the “cubic white cabin” we built a little white box.

Some time ago I wrote a text entitled “Boxes, little boxes, big boxes”. And my first box-project that I created and built was Turégano House, in Pozuelo-Madrid, almost 25 years ago. A white cube measuring 10x10x10 metres: a “cubic white cabin”.

So now to celebrate the event after all these years Roberto Turégano y Alicia Sánchez, who are now more friends than clients, have asked me to build this new piece. Alicia Sánchez is one of the leading actresses of the Spanish stage and Roberto Turégano one of our foremost graphic designers. And this little piece will be his studio at the foot of his house.

The result is very simple: a little box measuring 10x5x3 metres, as if it were a quarter of that cube. The new piece is in line with the existing one in its external walls and the use of the same stone floor ensures continuity with the house inside and outside. Thus the two pieces are in complete harmony. The short external walls of the new white box are entirely open, transparent and continuous. A large circular skylight in the ceiling is the counterpoint to this spatial arrangement.

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by Alberto Campo Baeza appeared first on Dezeen.

Long wooden panels give a shed-like aesthetic to the walls and cabinets of this apartment in A Coruña, Spain, by Sinaldaba Estudio de Arquitectura.

Spanish studio Sinaldaba Estudio de Arquitectura adapted the narrow, confined layout of the apartment to create a single, open-plan living space at one end and a bedroom at the other.

Working with a limited budget, the architects used recycled materials to construct partitions between rooms, as well as to build worktops and cabinets for the kitchen.

White tiles were stripped from the kitchen worktop and replaced with a stainless steel surface and sink.

Rugged stone walls were painted white, as were the timber floorboards and ceiling beams. Architect Ignacio Reigada describes this as a “necessary luminosity” that results in “a neutral volume – white, bright [and] airy”.

An entrance corridor, bathroom and small study space separate the bedroom from the living and dining area.

Bare lightbulbs and recycled furniture complete the interior. “The furniture is all recycled. We saw it in other apartments of this building, that still aren’t restored, so we decided to include it in the project,” added Reigada.

Other Spanish apartments we’ve featured include a seaside home with an all-white interior and an apartment with mosaic floors and a decorative ceiling. See more Spanish architecture and design »

Photography is by Abraham Viqueira.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

A Coruña

A top floor in a late nineteenth century building, located one of the central streets of A Coruña, in conditions very unfavourable maintenance, on a shoestring budget but with total freedom and trust from the client to choose the solutions, have us believe appropriate.

The house has the classic spatial configuration of a Gothic story plot: elongated, narrow, narrow, multi confined spaces? Is that what we all wanted? Quite the opposite. We proposed to completely empty the floor early on, keeping only the main stairwell. We got a single space, open, broad, bounded by a strip that houses furniture-kitchen-toilet-cabinet-study, i.e. a longitudinal continuous section running along the floor and containing all needs, freeing the volume and providing a spatial and visual continuity to housing.

The solutions adopted for the realisation of the idea happen to be fully reversible. We basically reinforced all beams that needed it with metallic elements, fir wood is used for the longitudinal strip and to repair the core of stairs. Both the stone walls and floors and ceilings are painted white, providing a necessary luminosity, as it is also the cheapest option. The result is a neutral volume, white, bright, airy, acting as a container for a small wooden box for communications and other longitudinal collecting the necessary elements to inhabit.

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Estudio de Arquitectura appeared first on Dezeen.

Following a series of stories about Spanish residences with tiled floors here’s a renovated early twentieth-century house in Barcelona featuring a mixture of old and new tiles.

Spanish studio 2260mm Architects designed the interior for a family, partially dismantling an old house in the neighbourhood of Gracia. The architects inserted an extra storey and added a tiled courtyard filled with potted plants to bring more light into the ground floor.

Most of the decorative tiles were retained and surrounded by new, grey tiles, forming the floors of two bedrooms, a kitchen and dining room and the hallways.

“The tiles are from the early twentieth century and were often used in houses and apartments in Barcelona,” architect Manel Casellas told Dezeen.

“Most of the tiles in the corridor and the bedrooms are located in the original place. In the living room and the kitchen we designed ‘carpets’ with some existing coloured tiles,” he added, explaining the arrangement.

Part of the roof had to be removed to add the new first floor, providing a bedroom and indoor balcony with wooden floorboards.

Wooden ceiling beams are left exposed on both floors, but are painted white on the first floor.

Other tiled Spanish apartments we’ve featured include one in Barcelona where floor tiles highlight seating areas, one in Toledo with green patterned ceramics and another in Barcelona with tiles that gradually change from green to red.

See more architecture in Barcelona »
See more architecture and interiors featuring tiles »

Photography is by Lluís Bernat.

Here’s a short description from the architects:

Casa, Barcelona

A renovation of a ground floor house of the early XX century in Barcelona, partly renovated a few years ago, with ceilings that hide a great height.

Although it was dark, its facades face to the street and the inner garden. The project partially disassemble the house and maintains structure and distribution: a new interior courtyard illuminates the ground floor and gives the kitchen some facade.

We added a floor into the existing volume and dismantled part of the roof, pulling some facade back and making a terrace for bedrooms.

We have used a dry construction system, with a new floor of wooden beams, OSB boards, wood fibre insulation and wooden floor. The new facade is isolated from the outside with wood fibreboard. We maintained pre-existing characteristics: interior woodwork and old tiles.

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Architects appeared first on Dezeen.